870 Hybrid model scrap handler on the job at Cimco Resources in Illinois.

A Sennebogen electric-drive 870 Hybrid material handler installed this summer is feeding a sizable Metso shredder operated by Cimco Resources in Sterling, Illinois.

Ron Brenny, operations manager for the Sterling yard—the largest of seven facilities owned by Cimco in Illinois and Wisconsin—says the 26-acre facility in Sterling can receive as much as 800 tons of material per day.

While the company handles plastics and electronic scrap, the bulk of what arrives in Sterling is destined for the site’s Metso auto shredder. Cars and farm equipment, demolition scrap and industrial metals are meticulously sorted to match orders for shred from nearby mills, Sennebogen says.

“We’re pretty full most of the time," Brenny says. "We’re using our whole 26 acres. I have a lot of [scrap] piles.” With the arrival of the new Sennebogen 870 Hybrid material handler this summer, the entire landscape of Brenny’s yard is changing, according to Sennebogen.

Cimco’s current fleet of 17 Sennebogen scrap handlers is comprised mostly of mid-range units typical for scrap yard applications: 830 and 835 models weighing in at 85,000 to 120,000 pounds. In comparison, the new 870 Hybrid is a monster, at over 220,000 pounds.                                                                        

“Our main objective was to get the reach,” Brenny says. Mounted on a 9-foot pedestal with a tracked undercarriage, the 870’s 90-foot boom can reach multiple piles of sorted material without maneuvering. The company says the extended working radius that has changed Sterling’s material handling and stockpiling processes.

Until now, trucks were offloaded at the far side of the yard. To feed the shredder, required material was loaded into trailers and moved up to the shredder’s infeed area, where it was offloaded into piles again. One of the 830 or 835 machines could then move it onto the infeed belt. Now, with the 870, several steps are removed from the flow of material through the yard.

“That was our goal; instead of transloading everything up to the infeed, we can simply unload right there at the infeed and just grab what we need when we want to run it,” Brenny says. The new setup is efficient for equipment and for manpower, he says, and it greatly simplifies scheduling the movement of material and simplifies his life.

With the 870 in service, not only can they position more stockpiles close to the infeed, but it can also pile more material. “We’re actually able to increase our yard space because we can pile higher,” Brenny says. “That means we’re using less ground, so we’re opening up more yard now.”

Brenny says he looks forward to bringing in a second 870 to service the north end of the yard, which would add further to Sterling’s total capacity.

When Cimco first decided to look into upsizing its shredder loading equipment, the Sterling team was open to all options. Initially, Brenny and his yard superintendent, Mike Kapple, and Cimco CEO John Gralewski were attracted to a tower crane from a competing company.

However, they say a video demonstration of the 870 changed their minds. “They were just showing the machines at work side by side, loading a barge,” Brenny says. “And I started counting. And I could see how many cycles the 870 made compared to the other crane. And I’m like, well, that’s a no brainer, guys. That tower crane won’t be able to keep up with my shredder.”

According to Brenny, his operators felt the same way when the 870 was delivered. “They’ve been feeding the shredder with an 835 for 15 years; they know the cycle times,” he says. “We were all impressed with how fast it is for a big machine, with so much stick out there. They got up in there and were amazed how fast it goes. It’s been in operation since July and they’re still ecstatic with it.”

Brenny says he also is seeing direct savings in operational costs with his newest Sennebogen. The 870 Hybrid features save up to 30 percent of the machine’s operating cost for energy.

The yard manager admits that the company made a significant investment in infrastructure to deliver the necessary power to the 870’s location at the infeed, but says he has no regrets. “That money up front, we’re getting that back every day just by not pulling up to the diesel barrel every day,” Brenny says. “And, we have no downtime for refueling either. The operator just gets in it, hits the button and he’s ready to go all day.”

Brenny continues, “With the electric, I can say it’s just a big super bonus for the maintenance side. It’s quiet. There are so many more issues involved with a diesel engine; you’ve got DEF [diesel exhaust fluid] and oil changes and everything else, you know. And that’s all gone.”

Brenny also credits the Sennebogen distributor in his area, Alta Equipment, for its role in keeping his scrap handlers on the job. “The whole organization is good to work with: the salesman and the mechanics, they’re good," he says. "And they have the parts that you need when you need them. That’s pretty impressive. If we say overnight, we get it the next day.”

Red metals producer says it will add 80,000 tons per year of scrap melting capacity in Vöhringen, Germany.

Germany-based red metals producer Wieland says it intends to invest 80 million euros ($79.7 million) in a copper scrap melt shop facility to be located at its existing Vöhringen, Germany, facility.

The addition of approximately 80,000 metric tons of annual recycling capacity “represents a significant next step in the company’s strategy to expand its recycling capabilities worldwide,” the firm says.

The recycling capacity investment joins one in Shelbyville, Kentucky, that broke ground this June and that has an expected startup date before the end of 2023.

When the Vöhringen capacity comes online in 2025, Wieland says its “rate of recycled content will reach an average of 80 percent worldwide.”

“The new facility marks the next important milestone on our global sustainability roadmap and brings us closer to reaching our ambitious goals in the area of decarbonization and in enabling a truly circular economy," Wieland CEO Erwin Mayr says. "Furthermore, the new recycling facility will create additional future-oriented jobs for Vöhringen, underlining the importance of our globally largest production site with more than 2,000 employees.”

The firm says that by implementing new technology and electrifying process steps that are typically gas-fired, Wieland will be able to further reduce its product carbon footprint, and “customers will benefit from products with the highest rate of recycled content and the lowest carbon footprint in the industry.”

Wieland, founded in 1820, describes itself as one of the world’s leading suppliers of semifinished copper and copper alloy products, with its metal used in the automotive, electronics, refrigeration, air conditioning and other industries.

Guest author John Gross of The Copper Journal looks at the likelihood of North America re-emerging as a copper scrap consumer.

I had the good fortune to attend and participate in the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) Copper Roundtable discussion held in Chicago in September.

Chris Greenfield, vice president at Ohio-based Federal Metals, moderated the session, which also included Tim Strelitz, president of California Metal–X, and Edward Meir, president of Connecticut-based Commodity Research Group. I won’t give any secrets away because I know some people (Tim) are sensitive about their age, but I suspect there was almost 175 years of industry experience and knowledge in that panel.

One of the main issues that came up was the need for more copper in the United States that is necessary to achieve the “green energy” transition. Taking this a step further, it has become apparent that the recycling of copper has reached a long-awaited and critically important turning point, with new secondary smelting projects announced, underway or operating already.

Over many decades, there were five major secondary smelters operating in the U.S., but one by one they closed due to outdated technology or financial considerations, and, most importantly, because of environmental compliance issues. Chemetco, based in Illinois was the last one operating, but it was shut down in 2001. Thus, over the past 20 years, lower grades of copper scrap that used to be processed here wound up being exported to other countries, with China being the main destination.

Regrettably, this contributed to a significant decline in the production of refined copper, as well as a growing dependence on imported metal to meet our needs. The facts and figures underlying these trends were laid out in previous issues of The Copper Journal, with the December 2021 issue in particular outlining the changes.

Copper Development Association (CDA) statistics show that production and consumption of refined copper have been in an overall declining trend in the U.S., with production falling from about 3.3 million tons in 2000 to less than 1.9 million in 2020.

For us, it’s hard to hard to believe this has been happening in the world’s largest economy. We can’t help but think that someone, somewhere in a high-level government position is asleep at the switch.

Regarding imports of refined copper compared with exports of copper-based scrap, statistics clearly show that while we are shipping scrap out, ultimately, we are taking that copper back in imports of copper contained in air conditioners, appliances, electrical devices and a multitude of other items.

Smelter production of copper scrap effectively ceased in the U.S. in 2002, thereby contributing to the exponential increase in scrap exports. As an aside, 2002 saw China surpassing the U.S. as the world’s largest consumer of copper and other industrial materials and also marked the beginning of the “super cycle” in commodities. Last year, nearly a million metric tons of copper scrap were exported from the U.S., with China being the leading destination.

Given rising geopolitical tensions, particularly between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, companies have to rethink their business models, and at a minimum, have a Plan B in place if international trade is impacted as we saw in the Russia/Ukraine situation.

So, the new secondary smelting capacity coming on stream can’t come fast enough, because we need more metal, and we must be positioned to have it recycled here.

Taking this a step further, it has been said the timeline from discovering an ore body to bringing it into production can take up to 12 years as compared with say two to three years for a secondary smelting facility to be built. Major mining properties are in the development stage here, but they’ve been tied up in legal knots for too many years, despite many millions of dollars that have already been spent.

Interestingly, more than a few people we spoke to in Chicago said their domestic business has been picking up lately because some of their customers were beginning to reshore a portion of their production requirements to eliminate, or get around, supply chain problems.

I will take the liberty here to repeat what I said at the Copper Roundtable discussion: I believe the copper industry of the U.S. is on the cusp of a major turning point, as the declining trends of the past several years are going to reverse and will begin rising in the years ahead.                                                           

The author is the owner of John E Gross Consulting Inc. and publisher of The Copper Journal, available at www.jegross.com. 

Steel production in the U.S. languished in September, as did scrap pricing.

The state of the steel and ferrous scrap markets remains mired in a trough entering October, with scrap prices refusing to rebound in September and steel production well below last year’s output levels.

The Washington-based American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reports that in the week ending Oct. 1, steel production in the United States checked in at exactly 1.7 million tons. That figure represents a 7.6 percent decrease from the same week in 2021. On a more upbeat note, the most recent week’s output is 1 percent higher than the preceding week (ending Sept. 24).

Year-to-date American steel output of 66.1 million tons is down 4.1 percent from the more than 71 million tons produced in the first nine months of 2021.

In the most recently concluded week, the nation’s mill capability utilization (capacity) rate was 77.1 percent, according to AISI, which is down from 83.3 percent at the same time last year. Year to date, an average capacity rate of 79.6 percent is down from the 81 percent average in the first nine months of 2021.

Steel producers have adjusted their output in different ways throughout the year. This September, Pittsburgh-based United States Steel Corp. made moves to cut back its blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BOF) output at two of its locations.

In a mid-September update to investors, the company stated it had pulled forward a planned 30-day outage on blast furnace No. 3 at its Pennsylvania Mon Valley Works complex from October to September. “Work on the blast furnace began on September 3,” the company said, adding that blast furnace No. 3 has “approximately 1.4 million net tons of annual raw steel equivalent capability.”

U.S. Steel also announced it had temporarily idled blast furnace No. 8 at Gary Works In Indiana “due to market conditions and continued high levels of imports.” Blast furnace No. 8 has approximately 1.5 million net tons of annual raw steel equivalent capability, the firm says.

Scrap processors and shippers continue to receive relatively low bids for their scrap thanks to a combination of the restrained domestic demand and a troubling steel sector situation in Turkey (the overseas destination with the largest appetite for exported U.S. ferrous scrap).

In early October, metals information service Davis Index reported that East Coast exporters were uninterested in selling cargoes of the heavy melting scrap (HMS) grade to Turkish bidders, who were offering from $365 to $370 per metric ton for scrap.

Turkish steelmakers are beset with a litany of problems that include a weak Turkish lira contrasting with a strong U.S. dollar, rampant inflation within Turkey’s own borders and diminished demand for Turkish steel that possibly is being supplanted in part by Russian steel seeking new markets in the Middle East.

For scrap processors in the U.S., the combination of factors has led to an early October market where domestic mill buyers are paying an average of $314 per ton for No. 1 HMS scrap. That’s down from an already low $316 monthly average price in September and down steeply from the $420 per ton rate being paid this January, when recyclers were already experiencing falling prices.

Pilot program in Vermont targets coffee capsules, polystyrene cups and some plastic packaging.

Casella Waste Systems and New Jersey-based TerraCycle have launched a previously announced recycling collection program in Burlington, Vermont, that will target “hard to recycle” items, predominantly made from plastic. The companies list “coffee capsules, cosmetic packaging, eyewear, office supplies, pet food packaging, toys and various types of plastic packaging” as targeted materials.

If the program proves to be what Rutland, Vermont-based Casella Waste calls “economically and environmentally valuable for customers” in the pilot group, the company says it then “hopes to bring it to other areas of its operating footprint in the future.”

“We’re excited to partner with TerraCycle on this project to explore how we can recycle more material and help customers and communities better achieve their recycling goals,” says John W. Casella, board chair and CEO of Casella Waste. “As with any pilot project, we expect to learn how to scale this resource management program and ensure that it can be economically viable during the trial. We are proud to try something new that might help further advance recycling and the circular economy in Burlington and beyond.”

Casella Waste says the subscription-based pickup service establishes it as “one of the first fully integrated resource management companies in the country to offer additional services for 20 waste streams not accepted in curbside recycling.”

Customers subscribe to the TerraCycle Pouch by Casella website and choose a plan. Casella Waste then delivers recycling pouches; once the pouches are full, customers request a pickup by scanning the pouch’s QR code or logging into their account. Customers then place their full pouches on their doorstep, where Casella will pick them up and TerraCycle will recycle the (acceptable) materials inside.

“Through the TerraCycle Pouch by Casella program, we are enabling consumers to divert waste from the landfill, engage their communities and be rewarded for their effort,” TerraCycle founder and CEO Tom Szaky says. “By encouraging consumers to rethink what is waste, this program helps build awareness that solutions do exist for items that may seem otherwise unrecyclable.”