Miami-based EW Polymer Group says the Genesis Evolution Catalyst (GEC) scrap tires-to-rubber compound technology it is helping to market can help tire producing companies “recycle their own products in an open or closed loop system, meeting emerging regulatory demand on companies to be responsible for disposition of their own products.” The catalyst works with any crumb rubber, according to the firm.

The GEC technology has been developed over the course of more than a decade, in part by Howard Boever and Minnesota-based TC Rubber. Helena Nelson, chief financial officer of EW Polymer Group, says the two firms are working “as one team to bring the GEC technology to the market.”

Nelson says “the time has come for this technology. For many reasons—climate change, consumer change, political change—we believe the market is finally ready for this shift.”

In a three-page document written to support GEC technology, EW Polymer Group writes, “GEC can recycle any rubber (styrene-butadiene rubber [SBR], ethylene propylene diene monomer [EPDM], polybutadiene rubber [PBR], isoprene rubber [IR], butyl and natural rubber), and products made with GEC can be re-recycled at least 10 times, addressing the ‘kicking the can down the road’ issue.”

Adds the firm, “The GEC rubber compounding process is readily integrated into existing rubber compounding. GEC catalyst uses standard industry equipment, requires no new capital investment, and the cost is at par with or below virgin rubber. And unlike other rubber recycling processes, the recycled rubber does not need to be de-vulcanized since GEC uses a reactivation bonding mechanism.”

Regarding tire performance concerns, EW Polymer Group writes, “GEC recycled rubber performs like standard rubber compound because it is standard rubber compound. It has been tested extensively in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The performance even exceeds virgin rubber for tire production.”

On the energy savings front, the catalyst’s advocates say the compound, when used in tire production, “cuts fossil fuel use for synthetic rubber production in half.” A compound made via the GEC method can replace up to 50 percent of virgin rubber with recycled rubber, “equaling a 50 percent reduction in virgin synthetic rubber production and a 50 percent reduction of fossil fuel use. Testing also shows promise that later generations GEC technology will increase the recycled content even further,” writes EW Polymer Group. 

Concludes the Florida-based company, “The GEC catalyst is currently manufactured in Minnesota and available for use by rubber producers in the U.S. and global market.”

Mexico has had a growing manufacturing sector for several decades, providing one reason why its ferrous and nonferrous scrap generation volumes nurture a market for successful and growing recycling companies.

In particular, Monterrey, considered Mexico’s third-largest metropolitan area, has benefitted from the presence of “maquiladoras,” or factories and assembly plants established there by multinational companies to be near the border with the United States.

“Monterrey has successfully attracted a diversified commercial base, including international companies from the aerospace, automobile, electronics, medical device and industrial [sectors],” says the MaquilaReference.com website.

Two scrap companies based in or near Monterrey that have enjoyed access to the sizable industrial base each have invested in baling capacity to help them prepare and ship the steady stream of scrap metal in the northern Mexico region.

Dimeca Metals in Monterrey operates an 800-ton shear/baler from Lefort America, the Florida-based business unit of Belgium-based Lefort S.A. The installation of the Lefort SB800 marked the third and largest Lefort shear/baler operated by Dimeca in Mexico.

The SB800 shear baler features a loading hopper, 800 tons of shearing force, a 23-foot charge box and a 230-kilowatt electric motor powering Bosch Rexroth pumps and a Lefort-engineered hydraulic system.

According to a news release from Lefort America, the model joins a Lefort SB660 track mounted shear/baler used at Dimeca’s facility in Guadalajara, and a Lefort SB770 used at Dimeca’s yard in the steelmaking city of Saltillo.

Of the new SB800, Dimeca CEO Ricardo de la Pena says, “We are very happy with this machine.” He indicates the production rate has exceeded his expectations and that Dimeca is able to cut and bale types of scrap that it had previously not been able to process before the machine’s installation.

Nonferrous scrap recycling has played a larger role in the growth of RIISA, which is based near Monterrey. Family business RIISA operates four locations in Mexico and has been loyal to balers made by Spain-based Imabe Iberica LLC.

According to RIISA’s Mauricio Llaguno Garza, who provided information to Recycling Today for an Imabe of America custom-content project, RIISA has 12 balers in its processing fleet. The firm’s website lists Imabe and United States-based Harris as its baler suppliers.

RIISA has its origins in secondary aluminum smelting, but it has grown to handle (and bale) a wide variety of scrap metals. In addition to aluminum scrap grades, RIISA now buys and processes red metal, ferrous, stainless steel, zinc and plastic scrap. “We are always in the search for new materials and markets,” states the firm on its website.

Llaguno Garza says the machines RIISA has acquired from Florida-based Imabe of America are “dependable, worry-free and very easy to operate.”

The Mexican economy is facing the same challenges as others around the world in seeking to regain momentum lost from COVID-19-related disruptions.

The nation has a stable regional trading regimen in place in the form of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and its current government has initiated considerable infrastructure spending. Ideally, the economic circumstances will keep Mexico’s metal baling and shearing equipment—and the recycling companies that operate them—humming throughout 2021.

Household consumers and packaging firms around the world have been selecting metal packaging as an easily recycled option to meet sustainability goals that are growing in prominence. In India right now, however, a government-imposed import restriction is limiting the production of steel cans, according to a trade association in the nation.

The New Delhi-based Metal Containers Manufacturers Association (MCMA) says the metal packaging sector in the nation “is in a dilemma as they have hardly any option left to secure raw material, as most of the global players and suppliers of tinplate/tin-free steel have raised their hands to supply to India in the wake of the imposition of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)” enforcement.

The BIS measure in question dates back to July 2020, when India’s Ministry of Steel issued an order mandating BIS certification “on the major inputs required by the industry, like tinplate and tin-free steel. It imposes restrictions on steel products like easy-open ends, peel off ends, which the industry imports from several foreign countries,” states MCMA.

“This industry, which is largely dependent upon the import of tinplate/tin-free steel from various countries, is under tremendous pressure as there is a shortage of raw material and the prices have escalated more than 15 percent recently,” according to the association.

MCMA president Sanjay Bhatia describes MCMA as an organization that represents the interests of companies involved in the production of metal containers, packaging and allied components. The association predicts “there is going to be an acute shortage of raw material” if import restrictions stay in place.

MCMA says it has been seeking to put the implementation of the July order on hold until “sufficient quantities of tinplate/tin-free steel [are] produced locally to meet the industry’s demand of 700,000 metric tons per annum, as the industry is already reeling under the pressure due to the pandemic enforced lockdown across the country.”

Following feedback from the MCMA, the government has postponed the order until April 17, 2021, but the Indian steel industry may need until March 2022 to ramp up domestic capacity, the organization estimates.

Bhatia and the MCMA estimate that “there is still a demand supply gap of 250,000 metric tons per annum” and if the BIS inspection is implemented too soon, it will “seriously affect the trade and industry engaged in the metal packaging sector, and will result in loss of employment and non-availability of metal packaging to essential sectors like food and pharma.”

While recyclers might have some reasons to welcome the end of 2020, a panel assembled by the Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) identified several issues that could present headaches in 2021.

The BIR’s first installment of a series it is calling “The Challenge” featured Michael Lion of Everwell Resources, who serves as chair of BIR’s International Trade Committee, as its moderator. On the panel were Murat Bayram, who works from Germany for United Kingdom-based EMR Ltd.; Mark Sellier, president of the Hong Kong-based Global Metals Network; and Brian Taylor of the United States-based Recycling Today Media Group.

Sellier provided an update on nonferrous scrap shipments into China in light of its new quality standards and inspection regimen. “There are considerable difficulties for many importers in understanding how the technical department of [China’s General Administration of Customs] is dealing with the new standards. It has been very difficult for many importers to negotiate with Customs. It has caused many issues with slow arrival of cargoes at yards because they are stuck waiting in the Customs inspection queues,” stated the trader.

Exporters wanting to ship to China likely will need to stick with the highest grades, he added. “For example, many people have moved toward granules [copper chops], because it’s a relatively clean scrap,” Sellier said. “What I understand is happening, containers are being visually inspected, and if there is pretty much any plastic visible, the container is likely to be rejected.” Sellier said inspectors also seemed to be identifying paint as a contaminant.

For nonferrous traders who rely on container shipping, the lack of equipment and shipping space in that sector was causing a “double whammy” of bad news, Sellier and Bayram said. Sellier said some shipping companies have halved their “free time” allotted to shippers to unload or load containers from 14 days to seven, just as new inspection procedures in China are causing delays of 10 days or more.

Bayram, who works near the port of Hamburg, Germany, says he knows of exporters there who “had material at the port in November, but it didn’t leave the port until January.” In addition to shipping companies saying they are “missing up to 12 percent of their containers,” Bayram said absent port workers and efforts to keep workers farther apart means “only half of the containers are able to be moved” on a given day compared with normal times.

The ferrous scrap market moved from 2020 into the new year with prices rising by about $150 per ton in a two-month span, Taylor said, characterizing it as “an amazing 60 days for ferrous scrap.” The recycling industry journalist said scrap deficit nations, such as Turkey, Vietnam and those in the Indian subcontinent and Latin America, were scouring the global market for ferrous scrap at the same time scrap surplus nations such as the U.S. and U.K. were not generating the volumes of scrap they normally do.

Taylor said in late 2020, global traders had been “the first ones every 15 days or every 30 days to tell me ‘There’s going to be another price hike, because they want scrap in Turkey, or they want scrap in Bangladesh, and there’s none around.’” He added, “Nothing lasts forever, but it certainly has been a nice little boom lately.”

Lion was among those worried about whether some of the Circular Economy policies gaining favor in Europe might result in “the possibility of some form of export controls” that would provide scrap buying protection schemes for scrap consumers in Europe “under the guise of Circular Economy.”

Bayram expressed concern that large corporations “are influencing policymakers in Brussels quite heavily,” and that BIR will need to rally to present its case. He said, “The specific alloy has to go to the specific smelter. That’s circular economy. The circular economy doesn’t stop at the border of Europe. CO₂ doesn’t stop at the border of Europe. That’s why we have to organize ourselves, Michael. It’s a very, very dangerous situation.”

Panelists also remarked that the news heading into 2021 is by no means all bad. “German car sales are up; the machinery industry is picking up again. I think our sector is growing,” Bayram said.

Taylor added, “The optimism comes from the fact these materials continue to be wanted and in greater volumes.”

Sellier said thst while BIR might need to be on guard against protectionism in Brussels, it is because “recycling is one of the major commercial propositions going forward.” Multinational firms may try to “flex their way into a commercial advantage over others,” and that is because “smart money is going to keep coming into our sector.”