Hamburg, Germany-based Aurubis AG says preliminary figures for its financial quarter ending Dec. 31, 2021, indicate it generated operating earnings before taxes (EBT) of 152 million euros ($172.7 million). That nearly doubles the 82 million euros ($93.2 million) earned the same quarter in 2020.

For its entire fiscal year 2021/2022, which will not end until Sept. 30 of this year, Aurubis is increasing its forecast for operating EBT to between $454 million and $568 million. (The forecast range for operating EBT previously was between $363 million and $432 million.)

Aurubis, which operates a scrap-fed copper production facility in Buffalo, New York, is poised to increase its presence in the United States with its plan to build a scrap-fed smelter in Augusta, Georgia, that will produce 35,000 metric tons of blister copper annually.

“Just in December, Aurubis reported the best annual result in the company’s history,” states the firm.

Aurubis CEO Roland Harings says, “We achieved considerably higher revenues from sulfuric acid sales and an improved metal gain, especially for the industrial metals copper, tin, nickel and zinc – with increased metal prices. In the meantime, we’re [now] the leading European recycler of tin.”

The company describes itself as “consistently developing into an international multimetal provider that caters to the megatrends of the future and, in recycling a variety of input materials, makes a meaningful contribution to a functional international circular economy.”

The firm says its final figures for the quarter that ended Dec. 31. 2021, its first of the current fiscal year, will be released Feb. 7, 2022.

Metals traders in Asia and North America are reporting the third week of January has brought with it notices from nonferrous scrap importers in Malaysia that inbound loads are not being released by customs agents at some ports.

Two Asia-based traders have relayed stories of several such incidents to Recycling Today, and another trader in the Southeastern United States tells Recycling Today of similar experiences.

The Malaysian government enacted new scrap inspection and purity standards on or about Jan. 10. It spent much of 2021 preparing to modify and adopt a regimen proposed by government-connected inspection agency SIRIM.

With that regimen now in place, one trader comments, “Inspection on arrival is bound to create holdups; it was chaos in China for example.” He adds, “My feeling is that Malaysia Customs may take a more practical approach than China, but who knows.”

Another trader tells Recycling Today the container clearance delays are a concern, but buyers in the nation have not yet signaled panic regarding the situation. However, those buyers also don’t portray a clear understanding whether some grades could prove more problematic than others in the new system.

Any difficulties that could result in Malaysia will have a considerable impact. According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, Malaysia imported 428,000 metric tons of aluminum-bearing scrap from the U.S. in the first 10 months of 2021.

That figure points to Malaysia being the leading overseas destination for aluminum scrap last year, outpacing India (351,000 metric tons), South Korea (221,000), China (200,000) and Mexico (140,000) as the only other nations that had crossed the 100,000 metric tons threshold in the first 10 months.

Malaysia also has become the leading importer of alloyed copper-bearing scrap, based on U.S. Census figures for the first seven months of 2021. During that time frame, Malaysia brought in 58,800 metric tons of alloyed red metal scrap exported from the U.S. That far outpaced second-place China, which brought in 26,900 metric tons of such scrap from the U.S. during those seven months.

With China playing a reduced role, India and Malaysia have emerged as two of the fastest-growing overseas buyers of nonferrous scrap shipped out of the U.S. While primary aluminum producers in India sometimes lobby to put clamps on secondary producers in that nation, India’s purchases of such scrap seem poised to continue in 2022.

Jeffrey Zirkle, the former owner and co-CEO of electronics recycling firm Total Reclaim, Seattle, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Seattle to six months in prison for tax fraud, said U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. 

Zirkle, 58, of Gig Harbor, Washington, was sentenced in 2019 to 28 months in prison for defrauding clients by secretly exporting electronic waste to Hong Kong, despite presenting his business as an environmentally friendly recycling service. This second criminal case, prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Wilkinson, stems from Zirkle using company funds to pay for his personal expenses and failing to report the transactions on his income tax returns.

According to records filed in the case, following the prosecution of Zirkle and his partner, Craig Lorch, for fraud, a new CEO took over Total Reclaim. He discovered that Zirkle had embezzled from the company by charging hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses on company credit cards, according to a news release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. An investigation by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation determined that as much as $480,000 in charges were for personal items and that Zirkle never reported those benefits on his income tax returns. Many of the charges involved the purchase of luxury goods. Zirkle also spent more than $17,000 in corporate funds on a single day to purchase home appliances and more than $15,000 on a home irrigation system. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says, even after his sentencing on the fraud charges in April 2019, Zirkle continued to use the corporate credit card for his own expenses, charging over $5,000 for septic work on his home.

U.S. District Judge James L. Robart ordered Zirkle to pay $125,549 in restitution to the government for the tax losses.

In the earlier criminal case, an Environmental Protection Agency investigation concluded that Total Reclaim secretly exported more than 8 million pounds of monitors containing toxic materials, such as mercury. The investigation revealed that Zirkle and his co-defendant concealed this practice by submitting fraudulent documents to auditors and customers and falsified more documents when the practice was discovered.

Because of pandemic concerns, Robart ordered Zirkle to begin serving his sentence in early August of 2021. Over the objections of the prosecutor, Zirkle asked for the delay in serving his time so he could attend two family weddings. He will be on 18 months of supervised release for the tax crimes following his prison term.