Sims Group Acquires More E-Scrap Operations

Australia-based Sims Group has announced the execution of a purchase agreement to acquire the end-of-life recycling assets of three Xstrata Copper Canada’s e-scrap recycling business. The facilities are located in Roseville, Calif.; Lavergne, Tenn., and Brampton, Ontario.

The acquisition is the second recent acquisition of e-scrap recycling facilities by Sims Group in North America. The company recently announced the acquisition of Chicago-based United Recycling Industries. That deal closed this week. URI provides a full range of recycling services, including collection, refurbishment and resale of equipment; chip recovery for re-sale; mechanical processing of monitors, mechanical recycling of e-waste and smelting and refining of high grade electronic material.

The acquisition of the Xstrata facilities is expected to be complete by the middle of next month. The three, previously owned by Noranda, provide asset recovery and e-recycling services, including mechanical processing.

Xstrata Copper will continue to receive and process the copper and precious metal bearing product stream from the facilities. Xstrata Copper Canada will continue to operate precious metal recovery and sampling facilities located at East Providence, RI, and San Jose, Calif., under the banner of Noranda Recycling.

Commercial offices in Toronto, Ontario, San Jose, California, East Providence, Rhode Island, Penang, Malaysia and Zug, Switzerland will be maintained with the goal of expanding Xstrata Copper Canada's acquisition of recyclable materials.

"Following a strategic review of the end-of-life electronics recycling business, a decision was reached to divest these assets to Sims Recycling Solutions, owned by the world's largest publicly traded metals recycler. By partnering with Sims, Xstrata Copper has the opportunity to increase the volume of recycled material processed through its Horne smelter in Rouyn, Quebec, and to grow our activity in the precious metal and copper recycling business", said Claude Ferron, Xstrata Copper Canada's COO.