Cascades Inc., Kingsey Falls, Quebec, achieved sales of about $1.29 billion in the second quarter of the year, which is on par with sales of roughly $1.28 billion for the same time last year. According to its earnings report for Q2 of 2020, Cascades' sales decreased 2 percent sequentially as elevated COVID-19-related demand present in the first quarter of the year subsided. 

“As expected, this resulted in lower volumes in all segments with the exception of Specialty Products. Sales increased modestly when compared to the comparable period last year, supported by a 12.5 percent growth in tissue,” the company states in its latest Q2 earnings report. 

Cascades’ second-quarter adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBD) of $186 million, representing a 14.5 percent margin, was a quarterly record for the corporation and was 16 percent above the prior quarter and 19 percent over the prior-year period. The sequential performance was driven by improved results in all segments except Containerboard. The company says results of the Tissue and Containerboard segments were negatively affected by slightly lower volumes and slightly higher raw material costs compared with the prior quarter. 

At the end of the first quarter, the corporation viewed the sharp increases in prices of recycled fibers as “temporary.” Cascades reports that recycled fiber pricing has since decreased and is expected to remain within more normalized levels. 

Cascades’ year-over-year adjusted OIBD increase of $30 million largely was driven by its Tissue segment and, to a lesser extent, the Boxboard Europe segment. Cascades’ Specialty Products segment results were stable for year over year, while the results for the Containerboard segment decreased “mainly due to higher raw material costs and less favorable selling price and mix,” the company states.

“Our operations executed and adapted well during the second quarter, delivering improved consolidated results on both a sequential and year-over-year basis,” says Mario Plourde, president and CEO of Cascades. “This strong performance resulted in a record quarterly adjusted OIBD for the corporation, highlighting the resiliency of our business model focused on providing customers with essential, sustainable quality packaging and tissue solutions. The ability of our business segments to successfully navigate through the challenging second-quarter business environment is a testament to the commitment and hard work of our dedicated employees and a measurable indication of the operational improvements and cost reduction initiatives being generated by our strategic investments of the past few years.

“Looking ahead, we are cautiously optimistic regarding our operational performance given the weighting of our production that falls within essential tissue and packaging segments and the adaptability demonstrated by our business segments within the challenging business environment. In the near-term, this is counterbalanced by the ongoing potential economic impact related to COVID-19 and evolving consumption trends in end markets that have resulted from the pandemic. With this in mind, we are expecting consolidated results to decrease sequentially as benefits from favorable raw materials pricing are anticipated to be offset by lower expected volumes, notably in the Away-from-Home Tissue business and the usual lower seasonal third-quarter volumes in Europe.”

Plourde adds that the company has no updates on its Bear Island conversion project. White Birch Paper Co., Greenwich, Connecticut, had sold the Virginia newsprint mill to Cascades in July 2018. About two years ago, Cascades had announced plans to invest $275 million to make recycled paper products at the Bear Island mill. Plourde says analysis on that project has “continued at a slower pace” due in part to the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19.

Recycling Technologies has completed a detailed research and trial process with Ineos Styrolution, according to a joint news release, that included research and PS processing using Recycling Technologies’ Mark II test reactor. Both companies say they will advance this depolymerization solution based on Recycling Technologies’ fluidized bed technology, currently used for mixed plastics, adapting it for commercial recycling of PS.

This recycled PS has the potential to meet the high specifications demanded by food packaging regulations, making it attractive to the food industry, the companies say, creating a circular economy for the polymer and making the material more valuable.

Sven Riechers, vice president of business management, standard products, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at Ineos Styrolution, comments: “Recycling Technologies’ fluidized bed technology is a very promising technology to drive our joint agenda forward. I am looking forward to a fruitful collaboration in the interest of the environment, our customers and the consumers.”

Adrian Griffiths, who is CEO and founder of Recycling Technologies, adds: “This partnership creates the basis for a more circular economy in polystyrene allowing its users to achieve their challenging recycling targets set by all their stakeholders. To date, we have focused on the recycling of mixed plastic waste; this initiative will allow us to develop and expand our feedstock recycling technology solutions to address a new and important market, recycling polystyrene.”

Recycling Technologies has developed the RT7000, which turns what the company says is hard-to-recycle plastic, such as films, bags and laminated plastics, into an oil called Plaxx that can be used as a feedstock for new plastic production.

Ineos Styrolution also has partnered with Tigard, Oregon-based Agilyx to recycle PS. The companies first partnered in 2018 after signing a memorandum of understanding that allowed Ineos to deploy Agilyx’s depolymerization technology in Ineos Styrolution facilities in North America. The goal of the partnership has been to convert postconsumer PS into styrene monomer that can be used to remanufacture new PS products. 

Ineos, the U.K.-based parent company of Ineos Stryrolution, has partnered with London-based Plastic Energy to construct a plant to convert plastic scrap to make the building blocks for new plastics.

St. Louis-based Nestlé Purina PetCare Co. says it has reached its goal to achieve zero waste for disposal across all manufacturing operations in the United States, plus its corporate headquarters, in 2020.

“Purina is passionate about pets and the planet, and sustainability is a central factor in our operations and product development,” says John Bear, the company’s vice president of manufacturing. “I’m incredibly proud of the effort it took to accomplish this goal of being zero waste across our operations. This achievement is a testament to the passion and commitment of our more than 8,000 employees across the country who are working to create a better world for us to share with our pets.”

The company says its definition of zero waste for disposal means that all 21 of Purina’s manufacturing sites and its St. Louis headquarters “have found ways to derive benefits from materials that would have otherwise been discarded."

All locations now recycle, reuse, recover or compost waste from daily operations. In certain cases, locations also may use destinations that convert waste to energy to generate power.

According to the company, “Purina products feed 49 million dogs and 66 million cats every year, so reaching 100 percent across all Purina brands and factories was no small feat.”

As part of Purinia’s process, each site began with a review to understand its waste streams. That process helped facilities identify solutions and improve processes to minimize waste generation at the source while also identifying vendors who could support efforts to handle remaining materials in a sustainable way.

The company says some of the materials from Purina facilities helped transform the company's Yesterday’s News alternative cat litter, which uses recycled paperboard as a key ingredient.

“By focusing on reducing waste and finding beneficial uses for materials that would have otherwise been discarded, Purina employees led the charge by driving innovation towards a more circular economy,” says Gopi Sandhu, the company’s director of sustainable operations. “Some of our former waste materials now become soil amendments, needed to grow our healthy ingredients. Others are converted to methane, which is then captured to fuel the types of carbon-neutral energy we increasingly rely on.”

Purina says it also is working toward making the packaging for all of its pet care products 100 percent recyclable or reusable by 2025 and acting on a goal to use 100 percent renewable electricity at all of its sites.

Ansel Aberly, a long-time presence in the Detroit area nonferrous scrap recycling industry, has died at age 85 near his home in the Dallas area.

Aberly attended the University of Michigan and served in the U.S. Army before joining his father Herman’s scrap business, the Standard Lead Company, in Detroit in the late 1950s. He later owned and transformed the firm into one that sorted and recycled a wider array of metals, and renamed it SLC Recycling.

SLC Recycling’s 78,000-square-foot sorting plant in Warren, Michigan, was acquired by Windsor, Ontario, Canada-based Zalev Bros. in 1997, and after that by Detroit-based Ferrous Processing & Trading (FPT).

Aberly predicted the rise of China’s influence on copper demand and pricing, commenting to Recycling Today in 1999, “If you put a light bulb in every house in China there would be no reserves of copper. But in the future, the so-called third world countries will be large consumers of copper.” That year, China imported less than $1 billion worth of copper scrap. About 12 years later, in 2011, that figure had escalated to more than $16 billion, according to the Global Trade Atlas.

Aberly’s wife Suzanne says, “Although SLC was a state-of-the art operation, Ansel adhered to longstanding traditions, proud that he could make a deal on a handshake or with a verbal telephone agreement. As such, he occasionally bemoaned the invention of the fax machine, which eliminated the personal connection.”

He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Suzanne; his daughters, Rachel Aberly (McLane), Naomi Aberly (Lebowitz) and Jessica Aberly (Ditmars); and grandsons, Matthew and Benjamin Lebowitz.

His survivors indicate that as Ansel Aberly was a life-long Democrat, he had asked that gifts in his honor be made to the Joe Biden for President campaign, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), Annie’s List, Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas or The Nasher Sculpture Garden of Dallas.