American Pulverizer Co., St. Louis, has introduced a dual-shaft, 400-horsepower, hydraulically powered preshredder for pulling apart bales of aluminum, plastic, cable and wire, solid waste and more.

The machine has more than 200,000 foot-pounds of torque per shaft, with variable-speed shaft options to deliver the appropriate torque requirements for bale reduction, according to the company.

The company’s preshredder is available for testing to all qualified end users at no cost.

More information is available at www.ampulverizer.com. 

Copper Recovery Inc., Huntington Beach, California, says its new cable recycling plant, called Phoenix, has been designed to “become the premier wire chopper in its class.”

“With over a decade of running a wire chopper, as well as selling and servicing them, we are uniquely positioned to make the best-in-class product for our customers,” says the firm’s CEO Christopher Carlson. “We will continue to support our customers’ investment into the future with parts and equipment, but will now also produce what we believe to be a higher quality, updated and more powerful model.”

The company also says the Phoenix’s manufacturing partner holds multiple quality certifications including ISO 9001, ISO 14000, and several welding certifications. The manufacturer also is “certified by multiple third-party companies that validate the safety, reliability and quality of products,” says Copper Recovery, including TUV, GLC, IQNet and UNIcert. “Quality, reliability, and consistency are hallmarks of the new Phoenix,” says the firm.

Phoenix will be on display at Booth No. 2537 at the ISRI 2016 Convention & Exposition at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas April 4-6. Phoenix production is ongoing and Phoenix plants are currently available for quotation and shipping worldwide, says Copper Recovery.

“I have spent my entire career in the scrap industry working with cable recycling plants, and we’ve channeled that knowledge into the Phoenix,” says Beau Janzen, Copper Recovery’s project manager for the Phoenix. “We could not be more excited, as this is an accomplishment we can be proud of. We’ve installed a lot of machines over the years and have a very tight network of customers. We knew exactly where to focus on reliability and durability. We’ve also been able to implement significant improvements. We also offer Phoenix XD, the expanded version with greater capacity, featuring a Wagner single-shaft shredder,” he adds.

Copper Recovery also has announced a newly-forged relationship with equipment maker Reto Recyclingtechnik GmbH - System Redoma Germany and its status as the exclusive North American representative for Austria-based Wagner Machinenbau GmbH, which manufactures the Wagner Shredder line.
 

For the past two years, Mario Longhi has had to idle facilities and reduce the size of the workforce at United States Steel Corp. (U.S. Steel), but he said he remains optimistic the 115-year-old company is charting a course for future success.

Longhi, who spoke at the Platts Steel Markets North America Conference in Chicago in mid-March, called 2015 “a year we would like to forget, but we shouldn’t.”

He noted that U.S. Steel in 2015 idled some of its facilities, “reduced our workforce at all levels and delayed our electric arc furnace project [in Alabama]. We definitely did not relish making these decisions, but we did what was best in the long-term health of our business.”

Longhi expressed optimism that the “Carnegie Way” internal program at U.S. Steel is resulting in “sustainable improvements, not merely cutting costs.” He added, “I cannot say enough about how our employees have embraced change.”

On the heels of a new contract with the United Steelworkers union, Longhi said, “The union has been a true partner in the way we make improvements. The collaboration is incredible.” He praised the new contract as “a fine deal that can help us move forward. The most positive aspect is to have every employee participating and collaborating. They have come forward with thousands of projects."

Not in spite of but because of the company’s cutbacks, Longhi said there are reasons for optimism. He said the company’s internal evaluations found that “at some facilities, 10 percent of our volume was affecting our profitability by 50 percent.” He added, “The pursuit of size is not what the Carnegie Way is all about. The sole focus is value driven. We may have to get smaller before we get bigger again.”

Mark Bula, the chief commercial officer of Big River Steel (BRS), Osceola, Arkansas, said the startup company’s finishing (annealing and galvanizing) operations will be online by the end of March 2016, while the melt shop is scheduled to ramp up in November 2016. He said the company’s inbound scrap barge unloading dock on the Mississippi River is up and running and has demonstrated through recent heavy rains that it can continue operating through adverse weather conditions.

Bula said the $1.5 billion project is being backed by the German government—which has supplied “very affordable” debt terms—and a variety of domestic investors that includes the Koch Minerals subsidiary of Koch Industries, the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System and Miami-based Global Principal Partners.

Bula said he often fields the question, “What are you thinking building a steel mill right now?” The answer, he said, is that BRS’ investors “believe in what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.”

The company plans to offer niche and specialty steels for America’s electrical grid system and other energy and construction applications. Bula said the BRS Flex Mill concept combines “the best of EAF and integrated mills; it’s a combination of the two.” He added, “We’ve got a mill that’s built to make grades unheard of at the mini-mill level.”

Bula expressed optimism for the prospects of the mill on the 1,300-acre site in Osceola and said the company owns an adjacent 700 acres to prepare for anticipated growth.

The 2016 Platts Steel Markets North America Conference took place March 14-15 at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago.

The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), Alexandria, Virginia, has signed on as the newest funding partner of The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia. The IBWA is the fourth new partner in as many months for The Recycling Partnership, joining Kimberly-Clark, the Consumer Technology Association, and Heineken USA as the latest additions to The Partnership’s expanding group of diverse backers, which currently numbers 22. 

“It’s a pretty simple equation,” says Keefe Harrison, executive director of The Recycling Partnership. “More funding partners equals more resources, which directly equates to the recovery of more high-quality recyclable material.”

She adds, “IBWA unifies the bottled water industry in much the same way that we unify the recycling industry, making them great strategy partners for squeezing every last drop of goodness out of our work.”

In 2015, The Recycling Partnership says it leveraged $11 million in new recycling infrastructure, including the delivery of 165,000 recycling carts, and provided direct value to 1.2 million households. New engagements in 2016 include improving quality across Massachusetts in partnership with Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, and rolling out carts in partnership with the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“The bottled water industry is actively working to build partnerships that will help increase recycling efforts, and the reliable, scalable results that The Recycling Partnership delivers are hitting the mark for us,” says Chris Hogan, IBWA vice president of communications. “The recycling rate for single-serve PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottled water containers has more than doubled in the last 10 years, and they are the most frequently recycled PET beverage containers in curbside recycling programs. As an industry, we are always looking for ways to strengthen existing programs and help to expand recycling efforts ever further.”

 The Partnership’s 2016 grant round is currently open, geared specifically to help counties, municipalities, tribes and solid waste authorities with 4,000 or more households upgrade to cart-based collection. The new Request for Proposals for cart and education grants is available at http://recyclingpartnership.org.