Middletown, Ohio-based Cohen reportedly is a key investor in scrap-to-copper cathode plant.

Middletown, Ohio-based scrap recycling firm Cohen is reportedly a key investor in an effort to bring a red metal scrap-to-copper cathode production facility to southwest or west central Ohio.

A mid-June article from FastmarketsAMM cites Cohen’s Tyler Fojtik as the CEO of the Cohen Reco (renewable commodities) project, which carries a price tag of some $800 million and is in the process of seeking permits to build and operate the plant.

Fojtik tells the publication the plant will be designed to produce copper cathode from lower grades of copper-bearing scrap such as those produced in the auto and electronics shredding process.

Cohen operates about a dozen facilities in Ohio and Kentucky, including one auto shredder in West Carrollton, Ohio. The company increased its presence in the electronics recycling sector in 2017 with significant investments in electronics collection and recycling, including a shredding system in Middletown.

Fojtik says the Reco project will be able to convert the lower grades of red metal scrap into some 80,000 metric tons per year of copper cathode, as well as extracting as much as 10 metric tons per year of gold and additional quantities of silver and platinum group metals (PGMs).

The investment in Ohio is occurring simultaneously with a project in North Carolina that has wire and cable processing firm Prime Materials Recovery planning a melt shop that will consume 54,000 tons of scrap annually to produce 50,000 tons of 99.7 percent copper anodes.

The North Carolina project involves a partnership with Spain-based Cunext Group as a refining technology provider. In Ohio, Fojtik has indicated that facility will use European technology.

As the People’s Republic of China has erected barriers to its formerly high-volume purchases of red metal scrap exported from the United States, recyclers have posited whether some melting capacity might return to North America.

At the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) 2018 convention in April of that year, Tim Strelitz of California Metal-X stated, “I think a secondary copper smelter is absolutely vital to the good and welfare of the U.S. There is no reason why it can’t be done, if somebody wants to make good money.”

Steelmaker’s profits shrink compared with second quarter of 2019, but it avoids losses.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Nucor Corp. says it expects second-quarter 2020 earnings to be in the range of 10 to 15 cents per diluted share. The forecasted profits for the scrap-fed electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaker would be higher than the 7 cents per diluted share earned in the first quarter of the year, but down significantly from second quarter 2019 earnings of $1.26 per diluted share.

“Nucor’s better-than-expected second quarter performance reflects both the power of our culture and the strength of our business model,” states Leon Topalian, the company’s president and CEO. “By working hard and working together, the 27,000 men and women on the Nucor team have done an excellent job of taking care of each other, our customers and our shareholders.”

Partially hampering first quarter 2020 earnings were what Nucor calls “losses on assets of $288 million, or 92 cents per diluted share, related to our equity method investment” in Italy-based Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. Output at that facility was halted because of COVID-19 impacts on March 12.

“Many state and local governments are taking actions to phase-in the gradual re-opening of their economies as we progress through the COVID-19 pandemic,” Topalian says. “The enterprise-wide efforts to conserve cash and support our teammates during the COVID-19 pandemic as described in our first quarter earnings release and 10-Q have not changed significantly, and we will proceed with caution during these uncertain times.”

The company credits a second quarter operating performance that “has been better than expected” as a key factor in Nucor retaining profitability. “Though overall market conditions are still challenged by the pandemic, demand in nonresidential construction has been resilient during this time,” the company says.

Nucor says that while automotive production in the United States was halted because of COVID-19 concerns, “We are [now] seeing a strong rebound in automotive-related steel demand. The automotive industry experienced better than expected sales during their outage period resulting in low inventory levels as we enter the third quarter of 2020.”

The company says its scrap and raw materials segment “has been challenged by decreased pricing for raw materials and the impact of an outage at our direct reduced iron (DRI) facility in Trinidad to comply with that country’s stay at home orders.”

The steelmaker concludes, “We believe Nucor is well positioned to navigate any future challenges that arise from these current situations given our advantaged cost position, flexible production capability and financial strength.”

Recycling association BVSE views new initiative from DB Cargo positively.

An executive from Germany-based freight rail firm DB Cargo has announced a change of strategy that is being viewed positively by the Bundesverband Sekundärrohstoffe und Entsorgung e.V. (BVSE), an association representing recyclers in that nation.

According to a BVSE website posting, DB Cargo CEO Sigrid Nikutta “wants to go on a growth course [and] is planning new hires.” BVSE says this message is welcome since “around one-third of scrap trade volumes [in Germany] are transported to customers by rail. The scrap industry is therefore urgently dependent on efficient rail freight transport.”

BVSE characterizes the current relationship between DB Cargo and the recycling industry as troubled. “We have to transport large tonnages quickly and safely, and available freight wagons and functioning sidings are an important prerequisite for this,” comments BVSE General Manager Eric Roebuck. “Both elements are lacking, and this deficiency has been managed poorly by DB Cargo for years.”

Nikutta has announced DB Cargo intends to grow “in the single wagon business, which is particularly dependent on medium-sized companies that do not have a large volume to be able to load block trains,” says BVSE.

BVSE says Nikutta has indicated DB Cargo “wants to compensate for missing rail connections by offering DB Cargo truck pick-ups, so that the freight quantities can then be brought together at marshalling yards and brought on to the rails.”

Adds the association, “This change of strategy certainly caused surprises in the recycling industry, because DB Cargo has not [historically] made it easy for medium-sized companies.”

Remarks Birgit Guschall-Jaik of the BVSE, “If structures and customer communication are now to be improved, this is an important step.”

She adds that “capacity optimization will not be enough,” and says investments in infrastructure and new freight cars also will be necessary. Guschall-Jaik also says if the partially government-owned DB Cargo “crowds out” competition at the expense of private rail companies, it will not ultimately be helpful. “We need DB Cargo and the private rail companies,” she states.

The award recognizes Waste Management’s work to engage communities across Washington in recycling via its network of 11 company-run social media channels.

Houston-based Waste Management has been named Recycler of the Year in the Innovation category by the Washington State Recycling Association (WSRA).

Each year, WSRA presents Recycler of the Year awards to individuals, businesses, government agencies and community organizations that are strengthening and expanding recycling and waste prevention practices across the state. The Innovation award recognizes Waste Management’s work to engage communities across the state to recycle via its network of 11 company-run social media channels.

According to Waste Management, it has been able to strengthen the company’s traditional outreach and education programming through its social media engagement with area communities.

“The new digital landscape has revolutionized how people get information, learn and engage,” Mary Evans, director of Public Sector Solutions for Waste Management–Pacific Northwest, says. “Conversations are shorter, faster and [going on] 24/7. To this, add a global recycling crisis that upended the economics of recycling and created new pressures to reduce recycling contamination. It’s a huge challenge. Waste Management responded by using social media to activate behavior change to reduce waste and clean up recycling.”

Waste Management noted in a release that it works to develop social media content to “educate communities in compelling, bite-size pieces and activate positive behavior change around recycling habits.”

Panelists on a BIR webinar expressed concerns for the future of recovered paper markets around the globe.

During the Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling’s (BIR’s) Global eForum on paper markets June 16, panelists expressed mixed feelings about the future for recovered paper markets. 

Jean-Luc Petithuguenin, BIR Paper Division president and CEO of France-based Paprec, said he is “very optimistic” about the future of paper recycling. He said there are opportunities for more recovered paper to be used in packaging applications, adding that plastics are being challenged as a packaging option.

“We will see packaging and many other products switching from plastic to, for example, paper,” he said during the webinar. 

On the other hand, Keith Trower of U.K.-based Viridor Resource Management was a bit less optimistic on the outlook for recovered paper markets. Trower said he is a little concerned about the economic feasibility of recycling with very low prices for recovered paper. 

BIR General Delegate Sébastien Ricard of Paprec provided some positive figures for recovered paper in a presentation that featured data on worldwide recovered fiber production in 2018. According to that data, Ricard said more than half of all paper and board produced in the world is made from recovered fiber. Based on 2018 figures, he said 70 percent of all paper and board produced in Asia was made from recovered fiber. Additionally, 70 percent of all packaging produced in 2018 used recovered fiber. 

Dominique Maguin, past president of the BIR Paper Division and president of La Compagnie des Matières Premières in France, noted that these figures on recovered fiber incorporation in paper and board production are important for recyclers to consider, but he said he is a little more pessimistic on the future for recovered paper markets. While more than half of all paper production uses recovered fiber, Maguin said the amount of recovered paper generated in Europe is still higher than what it can actually consume. 

“Are we going to be able to export our recovered paper to foreign countries out of Europe? This is a very, very big problem for our industry because we have not had enough capacities to use all the recovered paper we are producing in Europe,” Maguin said. 

He added that the worldwide pandemic has exacerbated the challenge of finding homes for recovered paper. 

“The problem is that with this COVID-19 crisis, all the production worldwide has stopped,” Maguin said. “When you close down the factories producing cars, computers or something else, then you are killing the use of the cardboard to package this product. So, we are missing these tonnages, and we’re going to be missing these tonnages for some months. During the COVID-19 crisis, just in three months, we have lost something like 12 million tons of recovered fiber worldwide. Even if we are missing these tonnages, the prices are going down, which is a sign that this industry is not recovering so well from the crisis.” 

Panelists were also concerned about export markets for recovered paper, as China has announced plans to stop importing recovered paper altogether in 2021.

“This year, [China will] accept 6 million tons [of recovered paper] and at the moment, there is about 1.5 million tons of quota left for the year,” Trower said. 

“It’s very difficult to offset that lack of demand from China in the rest of the world,” added Francisco Donoso, managing director at Spain-based Alba Servicios Verdes. 

Some recovered paper exports have shifted from China to India and Indonesia, but Ranjit Baxi, BIR past president of U.K.-based J&H Sales International, said these two countries alone won’t be able to consume the same amount as China had in the past.

“There are no new capacities in India and [the] same for Indonesia,” he said. “It ramped up—they imported a lot of mixed paper—but now, as everyone is finding, they are redefining mixed paper. Their volumes were going down and will go down.

“We have to develop sustainable markets for our products,” he concluded. “We have to work together. We cannot do without exporting our surplus recovered fiber.”