Located in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, Asheville Waste Paper Co. Inc. has been offering recycling services for nearly 79 years.

The family-owned business launched in 1941 after Carl McMahan, a garbage truck driver for the city of Asheville, North Carolina, noticed the city was sending too much paper and aluminum to landfills that could be recycled. So, McMahan started Asheville Waste Paper by collecting cans and paper at his home, and he eventually opened a facility in town.

The company has stayed in McMahan’s family and is today led by his granddaughter, Annette Pace, and great-grandson Trey Pace along with his wife Gabe Pace. The company employs 15 people, and it focuses primarily on recycling various grades of paper from commercial customers. It also has several drop-off zones to collect cardboard from the general public. Trey says the company processes and bales about 3,000 tons of material in a month, and it has three balers it uses on-site in Asheville as well as an industrial shredder, two guillotines and forklifts.

Overcoming trials

Trey says 2019 was a tough year for Asheville Waste Paper. In addition to working around declining commodity prices, the company had to limit the commodities it accepted to stay afloat. The company also decided to close its facility in Kingsport, Tennessee. Trey, who serves as the company’s vice president, says the Kingsport facility had been operating for nearly 50 years at that point.

The company also was facing challenges with equipment at its site in Asheville throughout most of 2019.

“It was a difficult year with two of our main balers down,” Gabe says, who serves as the company’s chief administrative officer.

Trey adds that the company operated a foreign-made single-ram horizontal baler that was causing the company a lot of headaches. He says the company persistently had to fix issues on that baler but determined it was “a losing battle” to keep that machine.

Although 2019 proved to be challenging for Asheville Waste Paper, a nearly 40-year-old single-ram horizontal baler from American Baler helped to keep things going when other machines were broken.

“It got us through the hard times,” Trey says of the 40-year-old machine. “That machine has held up for us, and we are very happy with it.”

He adds that experiencing the longevity of that machine prompted him to invest in a new American Baler machine to replace its foreign-made single-ram horizontal baler at the end of 2019.

Nice end to the year

In July of 2019, Asheville Waste Paper reached out to American Baler about purchasing a new machine. Trey says American Baler had recommended the company invest in its 8043HS-10T75 single-ram horizontal autotie model.

Around that time, American Baler also connected the North Carolina recycler with Recycling Equipment Inc. (REI), Newton, North Carolina, to provide the company with more information.

“A gentleman from REI came and presented us with information on the baler, its productivity levels,” Trey says. “He sent me videos of it and information on technology it had. It was pretty much a no-brainer decision” to purchase the machine.

REI began to work on installing the new baler in November 2019. Asheville Waste Paper sent its foreign-made horizontal baler to a scrap yard, and the new 8043HS-10T75 horizontal single-ram autotie American Baler model took its place in the facility.

In December 2019, Asheville Waste Paper officially installed the single-ram horizontal autotie baler from American Baler. Gabe says the company even hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony with its employees for the new machine.

“It was a super big deal for us to be able to do that at this time in the recycling market,” she says.

With American Baler’s 8043HS-10T75 single-ram horizontal model, Trey says operations have been running much more smoothly.

“It’s a lot easier to operate,” he says. “Everything is on a screen and you can change bale density from a screen. It’s extremely quiet, too. We can run everything a lot faster. It’s just a lot more user friendly.”

Scrap metal processing yards have a reputation in every equipment sector that supplies them as harsh work environments. Metal-on-metal compression, shearing and size reduction is part of the process; dust is produced and can cause damage to sensitive components; and some operations are outdoors in ever-changing weather.

Two scrap metal shears made more than four decades ago in Cordele, Georgia, by Harris have endured these conditions in northern Ohio—where the seasons strike hot and cold as much as anywhere else in the country—in yards currently owned and operated by New Jersey-based Metalico Inc.

In Akron, Ohio, a 1980-vintage Harris BSH-1025-26 stationary shear cuts through steel I-beams, pipe, cast iron rebar and other types of structural steel, as well as oversized aluminum, according to Metalico Akron General Manager Don Fleming.

Not to be outdone, a Harris BSH-1003-26 shear that dates back to the mid-1970s is cutting through the same types of steel and aluminum, as well as fencing, farm machinery and metal tanks that flow into a Metalico Youngtown, Ohio, yard, according to Mark Chapman, operations manager there.

Harris BSH shears serve in such capacities around the world. The units are designed with a “tuck-and fold” compression box that squeezes large and bulky items fed into the shear hopper. Once compressed, the metal is sheared by a blade driven by a powerful hydraulic system designed to produce sufficient power while consuming minimal energy.

As the 40-years-plus lifespans of the two units on the job for Metalico show, a decades-old Harris BSH shears brochure promoting “heavy-duty construction” to provide “many years of proven life and durability” was more than just advertising copy.

Chapman says the Harris shear in Youngstown has likely processed more than 100,000 tons of scrap just since 2005, with no way for him to know how much it may have handled in the 30 years before then when “it was with another company.”

In Akron, Fleming says that shear has processed at least 300,000 tons of scrap metal, and even at 40 years old, it continues to cut through 50 to 60 tons per day three to five days per week.

Fleming and Chapman says they work with Harris directly and with an authorized dealer to obtain parts and help with non-routine service. Even though the units are 40 and 45 years old, Chapman says service from Harris is impeccable. “Support from Harris has been great here. If the dealer doesn’t have it, Harris gets it made and to us in a timely manner,” he comments.

More information on the newest models of durable, reliable and productive Harris scrap metal shears can be found at https://harrisequip.com/products/shears.

US Steel starts up Alabama EAF

United States Steel Corp., Pittsburgh, has announced the successful startup of its newly constructed electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking facility at its Fairfield, Alabama, operations. The company says this is the latest milestone it has reached in its “Best of Both” integrated and minimill technology strategy.

U.S. Steel President and Chief Executive Officer David B. Burritt says, “The EAF significantly enhances our ability to deliver customer-centric solutions and results. We made a commitment to add electric arc steelmaking to our operating footprint as part of our ‘Best of Both’ strategy. This successful startup delivers on that promise, and I am very pleased with the way our people safely accomplished this while navigating the disruptive influences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had the added benefit of using this project as a tool for technical collaboration with the EAF experts at our ‘Best of Both’ partner, Big River Steel. Fairfield EAF No. 1 adds significantly more sustainable steelmaking technology to our portfolio.”

U.S. Steel Senior Vice President – Tubular Products Douglas R. Matthews adds, “I am proud of the Fairfield team for their perseverance and continued focus throughout the construction and startup processes, especially on our core value of safety. We are excited to provide our customers with more sustainable tubular solutions, including our technically advanced proprietary connections, to support their efforts to safely extract and transport the resources necessary to power our daily lives.”

The EAF method of steelmaking uses electrical energy to melt steel scrap into liquid steel. In the startup process, U.S. Steel says Fairfield EAF No. 1 started its first arc and charged and melted steel scrap. Oct. 20, the operation tapped its first heat of liquid steel.

The company’s EAF has an annual steelmaking capacity of 1.6 million tons.

U.S. Steel announced the restart of construction on the EAF steelmaking facility at its Tubular Operations in Fairfield in early 2019. The company previously began construction of the EAF in March 2015, but it suspended construction in December 2015 because of what it said were unfavorable market conditions.

Earlier this year, U.S. Steel idled tubular operations in Lorain, Ohio, and Lone Star, Texas, because of weak tubular market conditions. In the company’s third-quarter 2020 guidance issued in September, U.S. Steel says tubular market conditions “appear to have bottomed, but catalysts for improvement are limited.”

Sims Metal Management New England, EPA resolve Clean Air Act claims

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Sims Metal Management (SMM) New England Corp., Johnston, Rhode Island, have reached a settlement resolving administrative penalty claims that the company allegedly violated the federal Clean Air Act. Under the settlement, SMM will come into compliance with state and federal clean air requirements and will pay $250,000 in penalties.

“Sims Metal Management worked cooperatively and in good faith with the state to obtain this resolution,” the company says in a statement to Recycling Today. “This matter pertains to complaints about alleged air emissions from the Sims Metal Management shredder in Johnston, Rhode Island, which has not been in operation since April 6, 2020. While the U.S. EPA participated in the negotiations, the state was the lead governmental organization.”

The EPA in concert with Rhode Island’s attorney general and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management alleged that SMM constructed the shredder, which it says is a new major source of volatile organic compounds (VOC) emissions, without securing a permit and without installing required emissions controls.

In Rhode Island’s related action, in September the state’s Superior Court finalized a consent judgment under which the company will pay a separate penalty to the state and take the steps necessary to comply with air permitting and air pollution control requirements.

The automobile shredder that SMM operates at its Johnston location processes end-of-life automobiles, appliances and other light-gauge metal-bearing materials. The shredder generates enough heat to melt or burn the plastics, paints and oils the scrap contains, causing emissions of VOCs, the EPA says.

According to SMM’s statement to Recycling Today, this latest resolution with the EPA was reached at the same time the company settled with the state of Rhode Island.

Cascades adjusts capacity

Cascades Inc., Kingsey Falls, Quebec, has announced that it is moving forward to convert its White Birch Bear Island paper mill in Ashland, Virginia, to a containerboard mill that will produce lightweight, 100-percent-recycled linerboard and medium for the North American market. The company also has said it will progressively and permanently close its tissue production and conversion operations at its Pennsylvania plants in Ransom and Pittston between Dec. 7 of this year and Jan. 31, 2021.

Cascades initially acquired the Bear Island paper mill from Greenwich, Connecticut-based White Birch Paper in 2018 for $34.2 million. According to a news release from Cascades, it plans to convert the mill to containerboard production by the first quarter of 2021.

The total cost of the Bear Island conversion will be about $380 million, which includes the initial acquisition cost paid to White Birch Paper in 2018. To finance the equity portion of the Bear Island mill conversion, Cascades says it has entered into an agreement with CIBC Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets and BMO Capital Markets on behalf of a syndicate of underwriters, pursuant to which Cascades will issue from treasury and the underwriters will purchase 7.441 million common shares at a price of $16.80 per common share on a “bought deal basis” for gross proceeds of about $125 million. Following the completion of this offering, the equity requirements of the Bear Island mill project will be fully financed, Cascades states.

The Bear Island plant will have an annual production capacity of about 465,000 tons and is scheduled to start up by the fourth quarter of 2022. It will operate at about 80 percent of capacity by the end of 2023, reaching 100 percent by the end of 2025.

“This investment, one of the largest in our company’s history, is a decisive and very important strategic move in the modernization of our packaging assets,” says Mario Plourde, president and CEO of Cascades. “By adding the Bear Island mill to our platform, more than 60 percent of our containerboard manufacturing capacity will be in the top quartile of the industry. In addition to offering a unique development platform, this plant will strengthen our geographic positioning and presence in the U.S. and will enhance the competitiveness of our asset base and our product offering, regardless of economic conditions.”

The paper machines being taken out of service at the Ransom plant have a total annual production capacity of 50,000 tons of tissue. Currently, the conversion of this volume into 6 million cases of product occurs primarily at the Pittston plant. These volumes will be moved to other Cascades plants and filled with additional capacity. The two sites employ a total of 229 workers.