Advanced Steel Recovery, a Fontana, Calif.-based scrap recycling company, has been looking at ways to increase the amount of ferrous scrap exported via containers.
Nathan Frankel, president of ASR, has been developing a piece of equipment that, if successful, could allow for a significant increase in the amount of ferrous scrap to be shipped overseas via container.
Despite a recent trend to ship ferrous metal by container, the overwhelming amount of ferrous scrap shipped is loaded via breakbulk. There are a number of impediments to loading ferrous scrap in a container, including the length of time it takes to, as well as the damage to containers caused by the traditional method of loading containers.
However, with a plethora of containers sitting on docks in the U.S., the opportunity to load them with even lower value scrap ferrous as an opportunity to reposition them to China is making the possibility of using a device to fill these boxes. According to published reports more than one million empty containers were shipped from Southern California ports back to China last year.
The container loading machinery, Frankel says, has been in the development stage for about 20 months. The FASTek (Frankel Advanced Shipping Technologies) is that using the system can cut down the time it takes to load the containers to less than 15 minutes, making containers an even more tempting method to ship material.
In fact, Frankel, who has been using the machine to run some trial shipments to China, says that with the equipment in place it would be quicker to get the container loaded and shipped to a port before the truck leaves the yard because the container would not have to be weighed more than the one time. And, with the weighing system as part of the machinery each load would come extremely close to the proper weight.
The company presently has applied for a patent for the FASTek. Frankel hopes that approval will come by this fall. The company also is working with manufacturers on potential joint venture arrangements for the machinery.
Other advantages to using the FASTek system will allow smaller companies to use the system as opposed to relying on the largest exporters to take in the loose material.
Further, Frankel says that the large West Coast exporters such as Hugo Neu and Sims Metals, could take advantage of the equipment as well by enhancing their breakbulk loading with containers of ferrous that could give them more material to ship overseas.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Frankel notes that with the new system a scrap recycler could ship scrap to China for between $10-$20 per metric ton, compared to around $40 per metric ton for breakbulk vessels.
The FASTek equipment also could be a viable method for companies hundreds or thousands of miles away from docks to ship ferrous scrap, especially via intermodal methods.
Frankel also hopes to lease or sell the machine to scrap yard companies that could become regional hubs for collecting and loading containers. For customers to shell out at least $150,000 a pop for his machine, he needs to demonstrate that it can be successfully replicated and withstand thousands of hours of wear and tear.