Scrap recycling is not something that is taught in school, and no major university offers a major in scrap processing and trading. Many industry professionals either grew up in the industry or learned on the job.

Brad Rudover, a partner in Detroit Scrap Consulting Services Ltd. in Vancouver, grew up in the industry. His family owned Berrick Trading Corp., a scrap yard in Detroit.

“I spent a great deal of time there but was never paid. [My] dad would teach me stuff, but he couldn’t explain to me the difference between No. 1 and No. 2, honey and ebony,” Rudover says. “So, I kind of went through my whole life having to learn on my own.”

On the other hand, Kate Fraser entered the scrap industry when she went to work for ABC Recycling, which has locations in British Columbia, as an office administrator. She knew nothing about the industry.

“I started in the industry trying to put together a new ERP (enterprise resource planning) system for the company, and I recognized quickly, ‘How do I get training?’ There was no training,” she says. “I was bugging the CEO or someone else on, ‘What’s this?’ And you would get different answers for similar things. It was frustrating and confusing.”

Rudover and Fraser got to know each other when they worked for British Columbia’s Richmond Steel Recycling in the mid-2010s. Rudover was the company’s nonferrous manager, and Fraser was an operations analyst and facility manager. Both recognized that scrap recyclers had different answers for how to classify different commodities.

“We recognized that there was nowhere to reach out,” Fraser says regarding training on metals identification. “I would go to ISRI’s website and its specification document, but that didn’t help to train guys working in the yard.”

In 2020, Rudover decided it would be a good idea to partner with Fraser to provide a training tool that scrap processors could use to consistently train employees to classify commodities. Rudover and Fraser had moved on from Richmond Steel Recycling at that time and were working for different companies, but both agreed it would be a good time to develop a resource that could be used by processors to train everyone from laborers to managers.

“I had been kicking around the idea for a couple years, and back in February of last year, I reached out to Kate since she had scrap knowledge and the right mix of skills to get the project off the ground,” Rudover adds. “As the pandemic hit, it allowed us to focus on building the course and block out everything else.”

By fall of 2020, they launched Scrap University as a resource for processors to educate their employees virtually.

Developing a course

Rudover and Fraser say they spent the majority of 2020 filming educational videos for Scrap University at Rypac Metal Recycling in Surrey, British Columbia.

“My mentor, friend and Scrap University Professor Craig Merritt allowed us to film at his yard,” Rudover says. “He has been an advocate for Scrap University from the beginning. We would go to the yard three to four times a week and shoot video to create the course.”

To date, Scrap University offers one program, the Certified Scrap Metal Professional (CSMP), which consists of multiple courses.

The program’s first course is a scrap yard orientation that reviews ferrous and nonferrous metals; operations basics, such as units of measure, scale types and weights, personal protective equipment, unloading, forklifts and material handlers; and basics on scale tickets, weight deductions, purchase prices and types of software used in the industry. After the orientation, the program walks students through identifying specific metal commodities: tin, heavy melting steel, cast iron, busheling, manganese, 6061 aluminum, zorba, twitch, honey, ebony, 2205 stainless and many more.

Fraser says each course feature videos to showcase materials in an actual scrap yard, text that describes the commodity and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries’ (ISRI’s) actual code for that particular commodity. She says she hopes the course can help connect the dots between the formalized ISRI codes and street terms used for different commodities.

“When you’re exporting something, you often use the ISRI code. But when you’re in the yard, nobody knows what ‘tutu’ is, for example,” she says. “So, in our program, we try to break down both sides. We want to pay respect to ISRI for creating the terms like ‘darth’ or ‘vader.’ Most guys in the scrap yard or bringing scrap don’t use the term ‘darth,’ but if you say, ‘ballasts,’ then that’s ‘darth,’ and if you say, ‘sealed units,’ then that’s ‘vader.’”

Rudover and Fraser aren’t the only instructors providing education through the platform. Rudover says Scrap University has other “professors” from the industry who share their insights.

He says Jennifer Betts of Argus Media, headquartered in London, teaches some segments on ferrous scrap, and Nick Snyder of United Metals Recycling, Caldwell, Idaho, teaches segments on brass and copper scrap.

Betts, who is vice president of business development for the Metals division at Argus Media, got her start in the scrap industry 15 years ago at David J. Joseph Co., Cincinnati. She says she did business with Rudover in the past and was excited to provide her knowledge on the industry for training purposes.

“A course does not exist on the industry—you basically have to work at a yard or trading company and learn from your colleagues. There’s not a course anywhere for you to learn how to … identify scrap,” Betts says.

She continues, “I thought this idea was really interesting. I think it would be great for educating the next generation or new employees.”

Educating employees

Since it launched last year, several scrap processors have enrolled employees in Scrap University.

Chad Sutter, owner of Sutter Metals in Tacoma, Washington, says he began using Scrap University as part of his onboarding process for new employees earlier this year. The company operates a scrap yard and two feeder yards in the Puget Sound area with a team of 55 employees.

Sutter says hiring and training has been challenging in recent years. He says it’s not always possible to hire people with scrap industry experience, so he wants to use Scrap University to help new hires from outside the industry learn more quickly.

“Particularly in our region, the Pacific Northwest, getting people to work in our yards or warehouse given the climate up here is challenging,” Sutter says. “It’s not like California—sunny and 70 degrees 300 days a year. Up here, it’s a big deal to have somebody have a potential yard position or warehouse position where weather might be inclement 160 days out of the year. Our applicant pool dramatically shrinks. To keep the facility running, onboarding is a huge part of what we are doing with staff.

He continues, “If you walk to a scrap yard day one and don’t know a lick of what you’re doing, you spend two to three months job shadowing before you can get to sort and make mill spec packages. [The course] helps with quality concerns. I’m not saying employees won’t need to job shadow, but it has cost benefits to us, cutting down training time by two-thirds.”

Sutter adds that Scrap University’s course also has served as a refresher for him and his more tenured employees.

Fraser adds that Scrap University’s CSMP program “is meant for everybody” within the scrap industry.

“We had a fellow reach out who owns a business, and he doesn’t have time to train his people,” she says. “It’s a small business. He wanted to go through [the program] because he stumbled into the scrap business. He’s making money, but he recognized he’s not making all he could because he doesn’t know all the metals classifications. He took [the course] himself. Now, he can have staff trained as well, and he can delegate with confidence.”

Looking ahead, Rudover says he hopes to develop more programs and courses for Scrap University. He’d also like industry associations, such as the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries or ISRI, to offer the program to members.

His overall goal, though, is for the industry to have a formal credential for scrap recycling knowledge.

Rudover says many industries have certifications or licenses, such as certified public accountant, and others have formal college programs that result in degrees. “The scrap business is one of the only businesses that doesn’t have a degree,” he says.

“Our program has now created that ‘something’ where [at] the backside of your title or the end of your name, you can put ‘CSMP.’ We’ve raised the bar in the industry by providing this information. You’ll be more educated, more diligent and more efficient,” he continues.

“We’re now starting to see CSMP in some of our graduates’ signatures.”

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at msmalley@gie.net.

The Proler name has been among the most recognized surnames in the scrap recycling industry for decades. Despite that, Becky Proler’s father, Jackie Proler, never expected that she would work in the industry when she was growing up.

Proler spent a chunk of her career in psychology (she has a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Temple University in Philadelphia), but her father eventually did offer her a job with the family company in pick-a-part business. Proler was living on the East Coast at the time and says her dad wanted her to return to Houston, so he gave her the opportunity to run that division in the 1980s.

Today, Proler co-owns Southern Core Recycling in Houston. She and her business partners, Alan and Carol Walker, founded the company in 1989. As the auto core industry changed, Southern Core reinvented itself as a full-service scrap company that specializes in shredded cast and aluminum as well as other forms of ferrous and nonferrous scrap.

Proler shares some of her experiences in the scrap industry in the edited Q&A that follows.

Q: It’s safe to say there are fewer women serving as executives in the scrap industry than men. To what extent have you had to overcome any barriers as a woman running a scrap company?

A: I understand why people ask that question. But the answer is, for me, it is what it is. I can’t change my gender any more than I could change my last name. I think that the industry is starting to be more aware that there are females out there that either own, run or are in leadership positions. Even in some of the large companies, you’ve got [women] in leadership positions. [Commercial Metals Co.] has a female president. Umicore has a female senior vice president. OmniSource has somebody on their board that’s a female. Schnitzer Steel has a female president.

I feel very comfortable in my role as a female in the scrap metal business. It wasn’t easy, but then again, I don’t know what easy is. But I do think that ISRI, our national trade association, has done a very good job at nurturing this gender issue and supporting it. We have Women in Recycling now, which I think is a good group, and there’s going to be mentoring that’s going on.

Q: What can you tell us about the Proler family’s role as shredding pioneers?

A: My uncles, Sammy, Izzy and [Herman] “Hymie,” and my father were able to develop and innovate a process to actually size material so that you could get the material that the mills didn’t want out. It was revolutionary.

My uncle Hymie Proler passed away last year, right before COVID. I was able to speak at his funeral. The one thing I said to people [at the funeral] is, “You know, the chairs that you’re sitting on, the metal in those chairs is probably recycled. And it went through a process that this man that we are here to honor helped develop, and that car or that Uber that you took to the funeral today could have been shredded in the original Prolerizer.” So, I’m very proud of that. When you have family members that set the bar that high, it’s very hard to get over that pressure.

Q: Considering the auto salvage aspects to your career, what do you make of the emergence of electric vehicles (EVs) and the scrutiny on fossil fuels?

A: Well, I know in terms of where we’re going with electric vehicles, I think it’s a natural progression. We have to look at other ways—the greenhouse effect is definitely a concern. Even the oil industry folks admit that. So, the question is: What’s the best way to advance our technology and maintain the equilibrium that people are used to seeing?

On the recycling side, you’ve got to remember, we see end-of-life vehicles. There’s always a lot of focus on manufacturing and coming up with new ways to harness energy and new ideas, making a car lighter—that’s why we’re using aluminum bodies now instead of steel.

The big challenge is how do we focus on end of life? Because we’re starting to see this in the supply chain now. These hybrid cars with the batteries, all of these vehicles are now starting to come in through our domain. And how we deal with them is something that is cause for concern. … We’re going to have lithium batteries in these cars.

In fact, two weeks ago in Houston, there was a Tesla that caught on fire. It took the fire department 30,000 gallons of water to put the fire out. So, these things are concerning the manufacturer. I get the fact that their main focus is building the vehicle. But, eventually, you have to deal with end of life.

And that’s my concern. What do we do with this material when it gets to its loss-of-use point? I am more than comfortable with dealing with that. But I’m not sure that we’ve advanced innovation enough to know how to.

Like many recyclers at the beginning of the pandemic, SteelCoast, a recycler of military and civilian ships, was unsure how its operations and profitability would be affected. Despite the uncertainty last year, the company pressed on, making changes to its operations and staffing.

In 2020, SteelCoast processed about 44,000 tons of ferrous scrap and other metals, which it shipped to mills from its yard at the Port of Brownsville in Texas. This year, the company projects it will increase production to more than 70,000 tons and will triple its workforce from 77 employees in 2020 to 240.

“The SteelCoast team recognized that 2020 was going to provide challenges in every aspect of our industry,” says Mark Hodgson, president of the company. “We turned adversity into opportunity and focused on the details of the business and the employees that support it.”

In the last six months, SteelCoast has processed and shipped more than 25,000 tons of steel and other metals, Hodgson adds. The company also received the 2020 Excellence in Safety Award from American Equity Underwriters Inc. (AEU). AEU, Mobile, Alabama, provides workers’ compensation for waterfront employers, according to a news release issued by SteelCoast.

Now, with the wind in its sails, SteelCoast’s leadership says the company has set its sights on dismantling the U.S.S. Nassau, a former Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship that has the capacity to transport more than 3,000 United States Navy and Marine Corps personnel. The project is expected to take 12 months to complete, Hodgson says.

Setting sail

SteelCoast was founded in 2017 as a joint venture between Hilco Redevelopment Partners of Illinois and MCM Marine Services of Michigan, which was acquired by Callidus USA in 2020. The company operates a complex at the Port of Brownsville, which recently celebrated its 85th anniversary.

“We’re a fairly new company to an old industry in this port,” Hodgson says. “We operate on a vessel recycling facility that’s been here since the mid-’60s.”

SteelCoast purchased the assets from a previous ship recycling and scrapping operation, ESCO Marine, which were sold following a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding that was filed in late 2015. Financial details and the purchase price were not disclosed.

The Brownsville facility already had undergone more than $1 million in renovations and improvements prior to SteelCoast’s purchase of the facility.

It recycles oceangoing vessels (military and nonmilitary) from around the world, in addition to dismantling decommissioned, idled or underutilized oil rigs, train locomotives, rail cars and other industrial and commercial sources of recyclable metals. Additionally, SteelCoast operates a 4,500-horsepower shredder.

The Port of Brownsville opened in 1936 and consists of a 17-mile-long ship channel. It is the only deepwater seaport located directly on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to port officials.

Today, the Port of Brownsville’s ship recycling operations capture more than 85 percent of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) ship recycling business.

The port is home to ship recycling companies like SteelCoast, All Star Metals and International Shipbreaking Ltd., which recently received the European Union Ship Recycling Accreditation, becoming the first company in the U.S. to receive that accreditation, according to the Port of Brownsville.

Activity at the port provides $3 billion in support to the Texas economy, creating about 51,500 jobs statewide, according to Eduardo A. Campirano, port director and chief executive officer.

Under the hull

SteelCoast operates an 80-acre complex with about 4,000 feet of water frontage on the main Brownsville channel. In addition, the company is expanding its operations with a new 13.5-acre facility nearby that will act as a feeder yard for the business’ main facility.

Today, SteelCoast employs 160 workers and serves as one of the primary contractors for the U.S. Navy and MARAD. While the company has only been around for four years, Hodgson says everyone on its management team has at least 20 years of industry experience.

The company specializes in ship abatement and remediation, including removing hazardous materials, such as mercury and asbestos, from ships and separating the scrap metal. Hodgson says SteelCoast processes about 6,000 tons of ferrous material and 300 tons of nonferrous material per month.

Photos courtesy of SteelCoast

To do this, the company operates five large crawler cranes that feature 250- to 330-ton lifting capacities, large material handlers and heavy hauling trucks. The company breaks each ship down using two excavators equipped with shears, says Alberto Garcia, chief financial officer of SteelCoast.

“There are more than 50 pieces of moving equipment in the facility every day,” Hodgson adds.

Navigating uneasy waters

While the company has positioned itself to double its scrap output, SteelCoast’s executives were not always clear what the company’s future would be at the start of the pandemic. Hodgson says his management team needed to examine every aspect of SteelCoast’s operations to figure out how to maintain profitability.

“We got granular and looked at every aspect of our business, including our team and operations,” Hodgson says.

Ultimately, the company scaled back the size of its workforce and reinvested the money it saved into the remaining employees. Some investments include an increased focus on training and education, which helped to create a stronger team mentality to keep the business running efficiently, he says.

“Our business philosophy is ‘Team First,’” Hodgson says. “We’re a very labor-intensive business, and our focus is primarily on our time. Continuous education and communication of our teams at all levels is key to the productivity of our business.”

SteelCoast also spent time examining how it operated and developing best practices to keep its operations running smoothly. Paring down staffing helped save money, but Hodgson also says his team began working on a new staggered schedule that allowed the facility to run effectively with fewer employees.

“All of these things have allowed us to emerge in 2021 as a much stronger and formidable business,” he says. “Our team sets this company apart from the competitors. We’re always looking for innovations, and we listen to our team to find what will let us stay ahead of the game.”

As the company continued to grow, it eventually brought back workers it let go at the height of the pandemic, Hodgson says. Now, he says, the scrap metal market is the strongest he has seen in a long time. Surveyed pricing from Fastmarkets AMM shows No. 1 busheling sold for $564.07 per ton, No. 1 heavy-melting scrap sold for $402.50 per ton and shredded sold for $447.30 per ton in May. These prices compare with $310.01, $216.67 and $264.30, respectively, in May of last year.

Hodgson also says that the Biden administration has plans to move quickly over the next three years to improve recycling nationally, which he says could mean more job opportunities and strong commodity prices.

Sailing the horizon

With strong scrap markets and plenty of projects in place, Hodgson says getting enough workers to meet the growing demands will be one of the biggest obstacles the company faces moving forward.

In terms of what is next for the company’s operations, SteelCoast is currently awaiting the U.S. Navy’s award of two aircraft carriers, including the Kitty Hawk and the JFK.

The business also is planning to expand its capabilities to dismantle the Navy’s nuclear ships when they start getting decommissioned in the near future.

“We’re not just looking toward tomorrow, we’re looking two or three years down the line to make sure we’re prepared for the future,” Hodgson says.

However, Garcia says that whatever happens next, SteelCoast is prepared to collaborate internally to address both challenges and opportunities. “We realized that one person doesn’t have all of the answers,” Garcia says. “The only way to improve is to discuss every issue with our team. This includes when we’re looking to innovate and do things differently.”

“We’ve empowered everyone to have a voice,” Hodgson adds. “It’s through communication and understanding that sets us apart.”

The author is digital editor for the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at akamczyc@gie.net.

When it comes to conveying recyclable metals, several universal—yet crucial—considerations must be made to ensure the conveyor will perform efficiently and reliably:

• How heavy will the load be?
• What volume of material will need to be conveyed?
• How far will material have to travel?
• What will the composition of the material be?
• Is the material wet or dry?
• Is the material flowable?

Conveyors that move metal scrap are workhorses. But metal scrap conveyors are not one size fits all. Metal scrap, which can be dry or coated in cutting fluid, comes in many types and forms: flowable chips, bushy bundles of turnings, stampings and other large pieces of metal. This creates a dynamic set of application criteria that the conveyor must be engineered to handle.

While selecting a conveyor that will accommodate the unique properties of scrap metal is a solid first step to getting the most service life out of a conveyor, additional factors should be considered for reducing downtime. Common causes of downtime associated with conveyors include carryover, inability to convey a specific composition of material or payload and preventive maintenance issues.

Conveyor manufacturers are engineering a variety of equipment solutions with the intention of helping scrap recycling operations reduce downtime.

Preventing carryover

As conveyor problems go, carryover (or carryback) is a chronic nuisance and a leading cause of unscheduled downtime. When material fails to discharge at the end of the conveyor and is pulled back into the backside of the unit, it results in unplanned maintenance. Carryover will sometimes even damage the equipment.

Some conveyor belt types used for transporting scrap metal are more predisposed to carryover than others. For instance, steel belt conveyors, which are widely considered a versatile choice for scrap metal conveyance, are more prone to carryover because of how the belt is constructed. Made up of a series of pans that have gaps between them, material sometimes becomes lodged between the pans.

A couple of conveyor belt designs are engineered specifically to eliminate carryover of metal scrap. The first is a magnetic conveyor that, as the name implies, uses magnets to make ferrous metal scrap stick to the conveyor.

As the material reaches the end of the conveyor and the magnets cycle back into the unit, the metal scrap loses contact with the magnets and cleanly discharges from the conveyor. The obvious drawback is that a magnetic conveyor will not move nonmagnetic metals, such as aluminum and copper.

Another type of conveyor that is engineered to eliminate carryover is a pivot belt conveyor. Each individual pan on a pivot belt conveyor is hinged on one side. As the pans move from the feed area toward the discharge chute, the surface of the pan containing the scrap faces up. When the pan reaches the discharge chute and begins to cycle back into the unit, gravity forces the pan to rotate on the hinge, which flips the pan over. This motion causes the pan to flap and flings the scrap off the pan, which prevents the scrap from sticking to the belt. This type of conveyor is ideal for thin, flat and oily stamping scrap.

Avoiding bundles of trouble

Inability to convey a specific payload or composition of scrap material is another common cause of conveyor-related lag or downtime. Bushy bundles of stringy metal scrap are notorious for causing delays, especially when loading onto screw/auger conveyors. Rather than following the feed of the auger, the bundles roll around in the in-feed hopper—usually until an operator manually breaks them apart and forces them along the conveyor. This process is not only slow and a waste of resources, but it also is unsafe.

Adding a step to automatically precondition the bundles for conveyance will result in more efficient operation. Auxiliary systems can be installed that will tear bundles into smaller pieces before the scrap metal being fed to the auger. This enables the system to consistently move scrap metal without operator intervention.

Heavy loads are another problem. Occasionally, loads will be heavier than what the conveyor is designed to move, which can overload motors and damage the scrap-handling equipment. Some conveyor systems include safeguards, such as torque-limiting protection, that automatically shut the conveyor down when a load becomes too heavy.

Improving build quality

The build quality of any equipment significantly factors into the amount of maintenance it will require. But with conveyors, certain engineering features help eliminate structural weaknesses, increase the service life of the equipment and decrease common maintenance issues. Many features can be engineered into conveyors to reduce maintenance:

• large rollers to cut down on friction and reduce belt pull;
• flanged rollers to help keep the belt tracking straight, which reduces frame wear;
• belt reinforcing impact plates to help protect the belt;
• heavy-gauge side frames;
• track and wear bars for precise belt tracking and longer life;
• integrally die-forming side-wings and flights; and
• welded seams rather than bolt-together construction to keep the unit straight and strong.

Conveyor operators must perform routine preventive maintenance, including lubricating bearing and rollers and checking belts for wear and slack (the frequency of maintenance and inspections depends on run time). Design features or system options can help decrease routine maintenance, such as self-cleaning systems, lube systems that automatically grease bearings, controls that provide maintenance-schedule alerts and remote monitoring systems that warn maintenance staff of potential issues.

A conveyor that is not providing optimum performance can be a significant drain to scrap metal recycling operations. By minimizing—or even eliminating—carryover, effectively handling difficult material compositions and reducing routine maintenance requirements, manufacturers will position their facilities for consistently efficient processing.

Mike Hook is the sales and marketing director for Prab Inc., Kalamazoo, Michigan. He has more than 15 years of mechanical design and application experience. More information on Prab is available at www.prab.com.