While Surendra Borad Patawari of Gemini Corp. NV, Antwerp, Belgium, said he saw considerable potential for the plastics recycling industry in the future, the chair of the Bureau of International Recycling’s (BIR’s) Plastics Committee acknowledged that the present is not without difficulties.

Patawari chaired his last Plastics Committee plenary meeting during the BIR World Recycling Convention (Round-Table Sessions) in early October in London. He is stepping down after 12 years of service on the committee.

“First it was China which placed restrictions on imports of plastics scrap,” he said. “It was followed by restrictions in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. Now it is India to where you cannot export the goods, primarily because import licenses have not been extended.”

Steve Wong, executive president of the China Scrap Plastic Association and managing director of Fukutomi Co. Ltd., Hong Kong, said plastic scrap import restrictions imposed by the Chinese government have made China a “buyers’ market.”

In response to these restrictions, recycling operations have migrated from China to other Southeast Asian countries, he said. However, those countries lack the infrastructure needed to cope with the millions of tons of plastics scrap being imported, Wong added.

Sally Houghton of Plastic Recycling Corp. of California, based in Sonoma, said the U.S. market for plastic scrap is “holding steady” despite China’s import ban. She added that polyethylene terephthalate (PET) was showing signs of upward growth despite low bale prices in early October.

Sally Houghton of Plastic Recycling Corp. of California said U.S. recycling infrastructure was caught off guard by China’s actions cutting off postconsumer plastic scrap imports.

Tub and lid bales, which are comprised of No. 5, or polypropylene (PP), also were seeing “healthy demand,” Houghton said. She added that U.S. recycling infrastructure was caught off guard by China’s actions cutting off postconsumer plastic scrap imports. That country’s absence from the U.S. market also is creating less pricing competition.

Keith Freegard, vice chair of the British Plastics Federation’s Recyclers Group and associate consultant at Axion Polymers, headquartered in Greater Manchester, England, was the guest speaker during the Plastics Committee plenary meeting. He said the U.K. “could do better” in the area of plastics recycling. Freegard identified a lack of consistency in collection, public confusion surrounding what can be recycled and the dual needs of increasing demand for recycled plastics and improving design for recyclability.

Looking forward, Patawari expressed his hopes for plastics recycling, saying, “There cannot be a better proposition than the business of plastics recycling.” He pointed to the availability of scrap and investment dollars and to rising governmental and public awareness of plastic scrap globally, saying that with “bold steps” from entrepreneurs, “each of us can profit immensely by engaging in plastics recycling” while at the same time “making the world a better place to live.”

BHS names managing director of Max-AI

Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Oregon, has appointed Matthias Erdmannsdoerfer to serve as the company’s managing director of Max-AI.

Prior to assuming this role, Erdmannsdoerfer served more than six years as president of Nashville, Tennessee-based National Recovery Technologies (NRT), a developer of optical sorting technology and a subsidiary of BHS. In his new position, Erdmannsdoerfer will be responsible for BHS’ Max-AI product line, including sales, business development and product and application development.

“Matthias has been instrumental to the development of both NRT’s technology and its global footprint,” says BHS CEO Steve Miller. “Matthias’ expertise and success working with all of our companies and systems, including with Max from the beginning, will accelerate our deployment of Max.”

Max-AI technology uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize materials in a manner similar to how people recognize materials. The company launched Max-AI in 2017 as a tool to power robotic sorters, optical sorters and reporting systems. The company says it will continue to integrate the tool into new and existing equipment at material recovery facilities (MRFs).

Since its inception, more than 50 Max-AI AQC (autonomous quality control) robotic sorters have been sold into quality control applications for fiber and containers.

“[Max-AI] has entirely changed the way we look at processing waste,” Erdmannsdoerfer says. “I’m currently building out Max’s human team to work with me as we continue to help our customers benefit from all that Max is capable of.”

Davidov

GBB adds principal associate to team

Gershman, Brickner and Bratton Inc. (GBB), McLean, Virginia, has announced that Sustainable Projects Advisor Robin Davidov has joined the firm as principal associate. A solid waste industry veteran, Davidov has more than 37 years of experience in sustainable waste management, renewable energy, recycling and organic waste.

In addition to joining selected GBB project teams, providing senior-level advisory and leadership, she will make her depth of experience and expertise available to industry solid waste leaders through the GBB Access! program, a subscription service providing on-demand, as-needed, solid waste management advisory and information through direct access to GBB executives, analysts and professional staff.

“A true leader, Robin is recognized in the industry for her extensive experience with public-private contracting, marketing of renewable energy, dispute resolution and public education, and we‘re very excited to welcome her to the GBB team,” Steve Simmons, GBB senior vice president, says.

Davidov is the former executive director of the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority, a regional multijurisdictional development and financing agency in Baltimore established to assist member jurisdictions in providing adequate solid waste disposal facilities. During her 30-year tenure leading the authority, she was responsible for the procurement of long-term contracts for the transportation and disposal of waste and recycling contracts. She also worked on the development, permitting, financing, construction and operation of three award-winning waste-to-energy projects and four landfill gas-to-energy projects, one sewage sludge composting facility and two solar projects.

“While at the authority, I had the opportunity to experience firsthand GBB‘s professionalism, work ethic and passion for sustainable waste management solutions through projects that the firm did for us,” Davidov says. “It‘s an honor to now join the team and work together on helping other organizations.”

For the past seven years, she has been an independent consultant, providing advisory services that included contract negotiations for the public sector, project management and professional coaching to U.S.-based and international clients, with a specialty in island nations.

Davidov served as a trustee for the Municipal Waste Management Association, the Washington-based environmental affiliate of the United States Conference of Mayors, from 2008 to 2011 and as the president in 2011. She also served on the Maryland governor‘s Task Forces on Solid Waste, Recycling and Dredge Spoil.

Davidov has an undergraduate degree in biology from Windham College in Vermont and a master‘s degree in regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania.

Based in the Tampa, Florida, area, she can be reached at rdavidov@gbbinc.com.

Kripke adds to trading staff

Kripke Enterprises Inc. (KEI), a nonferrous scrap metal brokerage firm headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, has announced the addition of Roch Leavitt to the company’s trading staff.

Leavitt graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans with a degree in economics and is a native of Daphne, Alabama.

“We are very excited about Roch joining our team. He is a bright young man with prior experience in the scrap metal industry,” says Marvin Finkelstein, vice president of the southern region.

Founded in 1993, KEI has locations in Boca Raton, Florida, and Jackson, Tennessee, in addition to Toledo. The company says its sales will top more than $150 million in 2018.

ISRI hires vice president of environmental, health and safety

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, has hired Scott Wiggins to serve as vice president of environmental, health and safety (EHS). The association says Wiggins will lead ISRI’s EHS training and outreach programs, including the ISRI Safety & Environmental Council (ISEC), Circle of Safety Excellence and OSHA Alliance, as well as the ongoing development of safety and environmental products and services.

“With safety being a core value of ISRI and the recycling industry, it is crucial that the association has a strong, qualified person leading our EH&S efforts,” says Robin Wiener, ISRI president. “Scott brings more than two decades of field and management experience to this role for ISRI. His knowledge and expertise will further enhance the many safety and environmental offerings available to ISRI members and the industry.”

She continues, “I am excited to be working with Scott as ISRI continues to develop and further strengthen the tools and other resources needed for recyclers to build a strong safety culture at every single facility.”

Prior to joining ISRI, Wiggins managed the EHS program for Delek Logistics, an oil and gas pipeline transportation company, and the EHS operations for two oil refineries in Mississippi, overseeing air permitting in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. Wiggins also developed safety programs, including training, inspection and policy gap analysis, and oversaw emergency response and was the technical liaison for emergency and EHS compliance.

“I am looking forward to getting to know ISRI and its members,” Wiggins says. “I am especially excited to use my 20-plus years of experience in EHS to guide membership in incorporating best safety practices and being compliant during all operations from transportation and driving to handling explosive hazards.”

Wiggins was mobilized twice for Operation Iraqi Freedom, including a tour in Iraq, where he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal. He graduated from West Point, where he studied general engineering, and received a master’s degree from Texas A&M University in construction management and graduated from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

While per ton prices for scrap paper remained stable as 2018’s fourth quarter began, greater volatility was occurring in board rooms and banks around the world as paper mills continued to change ownership and configuration. Just a few months after acquiring two paper mills from Canada-based Catalyst Paper, Hong Kong-based Nine Dragons Paper Ltd. announced a $300 million investment program for the mills, which are in Rumford, Maine, and Biron, Wisconsin.

Nine Dragons' Illinois-based ND Paper subsidiary says its strategic review of the mills led it to an “investment strategy that diversifies the United States mills’ product mix, increases their overall production capacity and fundamentally improves their viability for generations to come.”

The Rumford location will see an anticipated $111 million invested to finance two projects, including the construction of a greenfield recycled-content-pulp facility. Also to be installed in Maine will be a shoe press on a paper machine there, designed to increase the machine’s production capacity by approximately 20 percent.

“[Our] investment strategy diversifies the United States mills’ product mix, increases their overall production capacity and fundamentally improves their viability for generations to come.” – ND Paper, Oakbrook, Illinois

In Wisconsin, the $189 million list of projects includes the conversion of a paper machine to containerboard products and the construction of a two-line greenfield recycled-content-pulp facility. The pulp lines will add approximately 1,900 air-dried metric tons of capacity to the site.

Another investment in an American mill by a non-U.S. company is about to be resuscitated by Mexico-based Bio Pappel. Regional media in the state of Washington began reporting in early October that the Mexican firm’s U.S. McKinley Paper Co. subsidiary plans to begin production at its mill in Port Angeles, Washington, by September 2019.

Bio Pappel and McKinley Paper originally purchased the mill from Japan-based Nippon Paper in March 2017. Earlier in 2018, the companies disclosed they had pushed back initial plans to reopen the paper mill quickly. According to an online report from the Peninsula Daily News, McKinley Paper has reinitiated its mill conversion effort and plans to produce 250,000 tons of containerboard annually at the mill, using recovered fiber as feedstock. The nearly 100-year-old mill historically has produced newsprint and telephone directory paper but is being converted to containerboard production.

A purely U.S.-based investment in the paper industry also was announced in October by California-based New-Indy Containerboard LLC. That firm, which is a joint venture of Massachusetts-based Kraft Group LLC and Indiana-based Schwarz Partners LP, has purchased a kraft pulp and paper mill in Catawba, South Carolina, from Resolute Forest Products. A statement issued by New-Indy in early October indicates it is likely to make “additional investment[s] in its infrastructure [to] establish one of the most diverse and efficient mill operations in the industry.”

Containerboard production is up 1.6 percent year to date, and the sector’s mill operating rate checked in at 97.2 percent in August 2018, according to the AF&PA.

The company adds, “Going forward, we are excited about the prospects for this mill to produce a diverse array of products from existing offerings like market pulp, lightweight coated papers and specialty grades to new offerings of high-quality virgin ultra-lightweight linerboard. The Catawba mill will position New-Indy to fill a significant void in the domestic and international markets for these products.”

New-Indy describes itself as having “owners and leadership with decades of experience,” which includes International Forest Products LLC Chair (and New England Patriots football team owner) Robert Kraft.

Figures gathered by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), Washington, continue to show a packaging grades sector operating at full speed in the U.S. Containerboard production in August 2018 was up 2.2 percent compared with one year earlier, and it is up 1.6 percent year to date. The sector’s mill operating rate checked in at 97.2 percent in August 2018. Although recovered paper prices are still slowly recovering from China’s curtailed demand, the investments in North American capacity can offer some longer term good news to paper recyclers in the U.S.

Speakers at the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) World Recycling Convention (Round-Table Sessions) in London in early October frequently brought up the topic of tariffs throughout the metals-oriented meetings. The consensus among the committee members of the Ferrous and Nonferrous divisions as well as their guest speakers was that the U.S. Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports injected an additional level of unpredictability into markets for these metals.

Edward Meir, director of Connecticut-based Commodity Research Group, said tariffs “will create more problems than they will solve,” adding that they are “a very blunt instrument and can give a lot of unintended consequences.”

Meir addressed the Nonferrous Division plenary meeting at the BIR event.

Describing the Trump administration’s trade policy as “dangerous and built on faulty assumptions,” Meir said the tariffs could “chill” business investment and lead to the cancellation of projects.

“U.S. scrap has been a big casualty” of the most recent round of tariff activity, which saw China retaliate to U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods by imposing tariffs on imports of U.S. scrap, among other goods.

Looking ahead to 2019, Meir predicted aluminum prices would trade between $1,910 and $2,380 per metric ton, assuming a resolution of the Rusal issue. (The U.S. threatened to place secondary sanctions on the Russian aluminum company starting Oct. 23. However, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced Oct. 14 that it had pushed back that date to Dec. 12.)

As for copper, he forecast a price range of $5,600 to $7,200 per metric ton so long as there is some form of “truce” in the current trade war.

In his review of world markets, Mogens Christensen of H.J. Hansen Recycling Industry Ltd. in Denmark said the U.S.-China dispute was damaging scrap trade into China. China’s import restrictions and the ongoing trade war with the United States have translated into more American aluminum scrap finding its way to Mexico’s secondary smelters, he said. Meanwhile, India’s importers have been “hit hard” by the decline in the value of the rupee.

Prefacing a panel discussion on the topic of “Politics and recycling: a new era,” the session’s moderator Murat Bayram of European Metal Recycling Ltd. said rising protectionism has contributed to the “earthquake” currently rocking the scrap sector. He shared the view expressed by Nonferrous Division President David Chiao of Uni-All Group Ltd., Atlanta, that China will “very likely close its doors” to nonferrous scrap imports by the end of 2020.

Michael Lion of Everwell Resources Ltd. in Hong Kong acknowledged the “extremely unpredictable” situation that currently prevails, with “too much scrap in the wrong places.”

The secondary industry in the United States cannot cope with the material now available, and some companies have been left with no choice but to move volumes for lower prices to maintain cash flow, said Andy Wahl of TAV Holdings Inc., Atlanta.

Dhawal Shah of Metco Marketing (India) PVT Ltd., Mumbai, said India’s automotive sector is the country’s largest consumer of secondary materials, with demand growing at some 10 percent annually. However, he warned attendees against regarding India as the natural beneficiary of the changes taking place in China.

In its “Weekly Market Report” email dated Oct. 22, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, reported that falling aluminum stocks at the Shanghai Futures Exchange assisted in supporting prices, citing a report from ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank headquartered in Amsterdam. Aluminum inventories on the exchange declined by 22,001 tons to 820,675 tons as of Oct. 19 compared with the previous week. “But that support proved to be short-lived and LME (London Metal Exchange) aluminum prices are down just over 10 percent for the year to date,” according to ISRI’s “Weekly Market Report.”

“[Tariffs] will create more problems than they will solve.” – Edward Meir, Commodity Research Group

Aluminum scrap demand from China also has declined. ISRI cites figures from U.S. Census Bureau trade data that point to a 31 percent decline in aluminum scrap exports from the U.S. to mainland China through August. Shipments to Hong Kong were off by 26 percent.

ISRI notes that aluminum scrap exports from the U.S. into Mexico increased by 21 percent during that period. South Korea also saw 37 percent more aluminum scrap shipments from the U.S. through August. These gains pale in comparison, however, to those seen by Malaysia, India and Indonesia, which increased 366 percent, 145 percent and 122 percent, respectively, according to ISRI.

In the stainless steel sector, global output increased 7.6 percent in 2017, but Jim Lennon, senior commodities consultant at U.K.-based Macquarie Capital (Europe) Ltd. said “a turning point” had been reached and the rate of increase likely will slow to 3.4 percent in 2018 and 2.6 percent in 2019. Lennon, the guest speaker during the BIR Stainless Steel & Special Alloys Committee meeting at the organization’s fall gathering, added that the “protectionist phase” in the stainless steel market is making forecasting future developments more difficult.

Nickel pricing has trended upward in recent years propelled by demand growth for stainless steel. Lennon also said nickel use in batteries is growing 30 to 40 percent annually.

Lennon described nickel price volatility as “pretty intense,” adding that he did not expect that to change in the near term.

Nickel is in structural deficit, he said, but overall stocks remain high despite a recent “dramatic” decline.

Lennon said Indonesia is emerging as a key player in the nickel and stainless markets and could account for roughly one-quarter of global nickel supply this year.

Regarding global nickel use in stainless steel production, he said nickel scrap will grow from 904,000 metric tons in 2017 to 945,000 metric tons this year. He predicted it would reach 983,000 metric tons in 2019.