
Photo by DeAnne Toto
Speaking during the Spotlight on Copper session at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) 2022 Convention & Exposition this March in Las Vegas, Trent Poland of Kymera International offered the scrap dealers in attendance a view into the business disruptions affecting the daily operations of a scrap consumer. “I am sharing my experience inside my company. I cannot authoritatively speak about the entire copper scrap consuming segment,” he said, “but I can give you some data points that I believe are common issues.”
Poland is commodity manager for North Carolina-based Kymera International, a specialty materials company focused on nonferrous powders, granules and pastes, including aluminum, copper, tin, tantalum, titanium and their alloys, as well as vanadium, niobium and molybdenum master alloys. Kymera sells its products into the aerospace, medical, electronics, chemical, specialty auto markets. Kymera International has manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Australia, Europe and Asia. Poland, who is based in Tennessee, buys scrap for six of Kymera’s facilities, though the company has 12 locations worldwide.
The issues affecting Kymera’s operations are macroeconomic and “and generally beyond our control,” Poland said, as well as microeconomic and can be controlled to some extent.
“Even in the best of times, demand forecasting is a bit like playing the Wheel of Fortune,” Poland said, explaining how “way back in the normal times, our customers’ offtake was largely predictable, and this wasn't a very large problem.” However, since the pandemic, customers’ offtake “moves in jerks, stops and odd accelerations.”
Plant management tries to match facility output to the sales forecasts, Poland said, “but unexplained mechanical failures do occur. And now supply chain disruptions send us scrambling to find spares. We often have to wait for a backorder to clear or throw an engineer at a problem. What once was a 15-minute fix is now a five-day headache.”
Short staffing has “sent production planning into triage mode,” Poland added.
Scrap delivery appointment requests can be delayed “as we are often waiting for the other departments to publish their forecasts,” he said, adding that wild swings in delivery appointments are common. “Recently I literally started a Monday with a three-week backlog for delivery appointments, and, by Wednesday, I was asking folks if they could get me a load that Friday morning.”
Poland suggested that recyclers let their mill customers or their brokers know if they have loads ready to ship even if their appointments are a week out. “That way, if the plant starts yelling for material, we know who to call first.
“For mills, the chaos of trying to predict what we will need when is compounded if the planned deliveries miss their appointments,” Poland continued.
He recommended that scrap dealers ensure their loads are ready to go for their appointments. “Trucks are hard enough to find these days without shooting ourselves in the foot by not having the material ready to ship.”
While Poland said mills normally address disrupted supply chains by carrying more inventory, with metals prices at all-time highs, finance departments are discouraging this. “Paradoxically, we are having to trim our raw materials inventory at the worst possible time,” he said.
“My advice to you is, again, hit your delivery appointments,” Poland said. “Because if one of my plants falls out of production, inventory starts to swell and then finance starts sweating. If you miss a delivery appointment, you have just volunteered to help fix my problems.”
Poland also said his company is seeing a “record amount” of yards that are late for their deliveries, adding that many sellers appear to be overestimating the flow of scrap across their scales. “And as we rocketed to new COMEX highs, shippers locked in loads. I might suggest that one be triply careful about overselling their position,” he said, noting that he too has “gotten burned on the opposite direction.”
Poland added, “Let an extra measure of caution rule the day.”
He noted a decline in the quality of scrap in the first few months of the year, noting that mills are making “too much slag, baghouse dust and rework.” Poland attributed the declining scrap quality to the labor shortage, but he reminded scrap processors that downgrades and rejects eventually will result.
“My recommendation would be to increase your quality checks,” he advised. “Do an extra check before loading the truck to the mill and increase your spot checks behind your new inexperienced sorters.”
Short loads also have been an issue, with Poland noting that truckloads of scrap, which normally averaged between net 42,000 pounds and 42,500 pounds, are arriving net 39,000 pounds and even as light as net 34,000 pounds. “Our current average is now less than 41,000 pounds per truck,” he said. “This is putting the consumer at market risk, the very thing that we want to avoid given the recent large moves in COMEX. At some point, one has to buy an additional load, just to make up for all those small shortages.”
Poland suggested that scrap dealers avoid shipping short loads without getting the mill’s OK first, saying “it is exasperating on our end when we receive a 36,000-pound load while the plant is not in full production, as we could have easily waited a week or two and gotten the full load instead.”
With daily “scrap-induced ulcers,” Poland said creative problem solving and conflict resolution “are the skills that are going to get us all through this.”
He said personal relationships always have been an important and unique facet to scrap transactions. “To me, that is the fundamental key of getting past these challenges. Because when things go wrong, and they inevitably will, we have to work it out with our creative problem solving and conflict resolution skills. And we do that with people that we have solid business relationships with. That way, we can hammer out a solution that we can both live with. And we survive to scrap another day.”
Latest from Recycling Today
- BIR World Recycling Convention 2025: Handling increasing e-scrap volumes
- DA drops case against Radius Recycling
- AF&PA, Fibre Box Association update voluntary standard for recycling cardboard
- RLG partners to launch EPR training resource
- Metso to divest Ferrous business to SMS Group
- AE Global, rePurpose Global launch plastic negative and plastic neutral packaging certification badges
- Steer World launches iSeries line of extruders
- BIR World Recycling Convention 2025: Europe’s stainless steel industry struggles