California-based SA Recycling adds Southern Recycling yards in Tennessee and Kentucky.
Orange, California-based SA Recycling LLC says it has acquired the business assets of Southern Recycling LLC, including locations in Nashville, Tennessee, and in Bowling Green and Owensboro, Kentucky. Southern Recycling’s Nashville location includes a shredder.
The assets were purchased from Kentucky-based Houchens Industries Inc., with the acquisition closing and becoming effective Aug. 13.
SA Recycling says it has retained the employees of Southern Recycling, “and operations will continue uninterrupted effective Monday, Aug. 16, under the name SA Recycling LLC.” The company says the purchase will allow SA “to further increase its Southeast shredding and metals operations, as well as increase its scrap purchasing volumes in the area.”
In February of 2016, SA Recycling made its first entry into the Southeast scrap market when it purchased the 17 scrap processing facilities of the former Newell Recycling Southeast LLC. In November 2017, SA acquired the assets of Tennessee Valley Recycling LLC, which had been based in Decatur, Alabama, and operated seven locations in Alabama and Tennessee.
In 2018, SA made two more moves in the Southeast, acquiring the assets of Georgia Recyclers in Savannah, Georgia, and assuming the operations of yards in Mobile, Alabama, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, from St. Louis-based Alter Trading Corp.
Last year, SA acquired the assets of Steel City Recycling in Birmingham, Alabama, and West Point, Mississippi. Earlier this year, SA entered the Florida market with the purchases of Capital Scrap (Pompano Beach, Stuart, and West Palm Beach, Florida); Metals USA (Lauderhill, Miami and Opa Locka, Florida); and Southern Scrap (Pensacola, Florida).
In total, SA Recycling says it now operates 87 scrap processing facilities in multiple regions in the United States, including 15 shredders and deep-water port loading operations in Long Beach and Los Angeles, California and Savannah. The company is headed by CEO George Adams and is a joint venture between California-based Adams Steel and Australia-based Sims Ltd.
Houchens Industries is departing the scrap industry but remains a sizable 100 percent employee-owned company with more than 16,000 employees. Its holdings include food stores, restaurants, pharmacies, retail optical stores and a presence in the insurance, highway and commercial construction, distribution and manufacturing sectors.
Recyclers and brokers say demand continues to outstrip supply, which has pushed prices up for all grades of recovered paper.
As the year progresses, demand does not appear to be slowing down for recovered paper. Many recyclers and brokers say demand far outstrips available supply, which is pushing prices for all grades of recovered paper higher each month.
“In the Northwest, we are fortunate to have mills in the area that use recovered fiber, so there’s good strong domestic demand,” a material recovery facility (MRF) operator in the Pacific Northwest says. “Most of the paper mills in the Northwest, I don’t think inventory levels are what they would call comfortable. I think their inventories are lower than average.”
As long as the economy remains strong, the MRF operator says he anticipates that will translate to continued strong box demand.
A broker in the Midwest says box plants are “running gangbusters,” but there is not enough recovered paper out there to meet that demand.
He says the semiconductor chip shortage has adversely affected generation of old corrugated containers (OCC). “A lot of OCC is generated in semiconductor chip production,” he says. “There are a lot of headwinds, all of which create shortages. We see that the chip shortage has affected volume out of our dealers.”
Recyclers say recovered fiber generation is up compared with one year ago when more COVID-related restrictions were in place, but it has not kept up with the present demand. A broker based on the East Coast says he has noticed generation of recovered paper slip a little since the spring.
“It’s the summer doldrums—everyone is on vacation, and things slow down with supply,” he says. “Normally I see a pickup in supply toward the end of summer. I’m worried that I’m not going to see that, and things remain slow.”
Because some mill inventories are low, a recycler in the Southeast says some domestic mills he has talked to are buying tons from across the country to try to secure materials. “Mills are reaching out 1,000 miles outside of their typical wood basket to look for tons,” he says.
With hot demand, prices continue to rise for recovered paper grades across the board. In the August buying period, OCC experienced the largest jump in price of all recovered paper grades.
While demand for all recovered paper grades has been strong this summer, it has been significantly stronger for OCC as suppliers attempt to keep up with e-commerce and packaging demand. Some recyclers and brokers say domestic mills are offering to pay prices way above the average national price as well as offering very high premiums to secure that material.
In addition to rising recovered paper prices, paper mills are raising the price of paperboard, containerboard and packaging. In mid-August, Sonoco and Greif raised prices for all grades of uncoated recycled paperboard by $70 per ton.
“You’re seeing a lot of price increases being announced,” the recycler in the Southeast says. “I think all of the majors have announced anywhere from a 12 to 15 percent increase in their box prices, which is huge.”
Many packaging producers that operate mills also are doing well financially. In late July and early August, several large packaging producers, such as Atlanta-based WestRock, reported record revenues in their latest earnings reports. These producers also say box shipments are up this summer.
“Demand continued to be strong in the key markets we serve, including e-commerce, food, beverage and industrial,” said David Sewell, chief executive officer at WestRock, during the company’s earnings presentation Aug. 5. “North American per day box shipments were up 9 percent year over year.”
Although mills outside of the U.S. also need recovered paper to produce packaging materials, export demand has been a little soft compared with domestic demand in light of the high prices. Recyclers and brokers say mills in India and Southeast Asia need recovered paper, but many of them are holding out to see if the current high prices will drop, particularly as ocean freight rates also are high right now.
“They want the material, but they don’t want to pay the high prices,” the broker on the East Coast says. “They are dragging their feet on placing new orders. But, eventually, they are going to have to. [Prices are] not going down like they are hoping.”
While markets can change quickly and recovered paper prices won’t be on an upward trajectory forever, recyclers say it’s unlikely that the current demand will slow down overnight, nor do they expect prices to take a big dip in the near-term future.
“We’re in a commodity price increase environment, and we’re enjoying the benefits of that right now,” the MRF operator in the Pacific Northwest concludes.
The camera provides a behind-the-scenes view of Sunnking’s electronics recycling process.
Sunnking, Brockport, New York, has released a live shredder camera that enables residents and businesses to remotely watch as devices get destroyed. The camera provides a behind-the-scenes view of the electronics recycling process.
According to a news release from Sunnking, the live-stream camera gives residents and businesses more insight into the privacy measures put in place after they drop off their devices to be recycled.
“We see thousands of people recycle their tech at our collection events, through our fundraiser or during business pickups, and they deserve to know what’s happening to those devices after they change hands,” says Robert Burns, marketing director at Sunnking. “To us it’s important people know the process and know what is happening to the devices they’ve trusted us to either erase or destroy.”
Sunnking collects electronics from residents at the company’s free electronics recycling events throughout the state of New York and from western and central New York businesses. The company’s shredders cut through nearly 500,000 pounds of material each month.
A high-definition Toshiba security camera powers the live shredder camera, showing the first stage of the shredding process. According to Sunnking, electronics are fed into the machine on a conveyer belt to be broken down. The conveyor pushes the material through a ring mill to be further crushed and pulverized. Next, a powerful magnetic pulley divides any steel materials from the mix, and human sorters then separate aluminum. The leftover materials are then sorted and sent for processing and future recycling.
With the new cameras in place, viewers can watch the company’s shredder demolish devices anytime Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. EDT.
“Privacy is so important for everyone in their personal and professional lives, and this is another tool for you to ensure who you’re recycling with is doing the right thing,” says Adam Shine, vice president of Sunnking. “There can be pounds of recoverable materials inside each device, like copper, plastic and gold, that we try to ensure each bit goes to the proper recycle stream.”
A handful of paper mills are producing unbleached recycled pulp, and more projects are in the pipeline.
Unbleached recycled fiber pulp (URP), also referred to as recycled fiber (RCF) pulp, is a relatively new grade of market pulp that is produced using recovered paper that has been processed through fiber stock preparation systems, formed and then dried or dewatered and shipped in bales or rolls. Wet lap pulp is a wetter version of URP.
Many URP projects were in response to China’s restrictions and ultimate ban on recovered paper imports. While paper mills in China can’t import old corrugated containers (OCC) to make containerboard, these mills can import URP. Some recyclers have wondered if China could reverse its ban on recovered paper imports, which would greatly reduce the need for URP. Johnny Gold, president of Boston-based The Gold Group Recycling Consultants LLC, says he doesn’t think that will be the case, though.
“I don’t think these recycled pulp projects are just a Band-Aid because the investment made into them is multiple millions to build new machines and retrofit them,” he says. “I still think it’s economically expensive, but this must be the way mills over in Asia have to handle it.”
To make recycled pulp, mills use a blend of OCC as well as some mixed paper. The pulp can be used to make either containerboard or away-from-home tissue products. To make containerboard, URP incorporates higher levels of OCC; to make away-from-home tissue products, URP incorporates higher levels of mixed paper.
Recovered paper prices began to rise at the start of this year, and the URP price also followed a similar trend upward to start the year. At the start of the year, Fastmarkets RISI began tracking brown recycled pulp pricing. In January, brown recycled pulp was $450 per ton CIF (cost, insurance and freight) to China. The price rose to $480 per ton CIF in February and to $520 per ton CIF in March. However, the price has hovered at about $520 per ton since then and was at $515 per ton CIF in July.
A handful of mills currently produce URP. Some speculative projects also are said to be on the way in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. Bill Moore, president of Atlanta-based Moore & Associates, provides a list of URP projects that are completed and those anticipated to come in the future.
• Lee & Man, Selangor, Malaysia – 400,000 metric tons per year (wet lap);
• Lee & Man, Bago, Myanmar – 340,000 metric tons per year (wet lap);
• Nine Dragons, Pahang, Malaysia – 400,000 metric tons per year (wet lap);
• ND Paper LLC, Fairmont, West Virginia – 217,000 metric tons per year;
• ND Paper LLC, Old Town, Maine – 66,000 metric tons per year;
• NORPAC, Longview, Washington – 135,000 metric tons per year (existing machine with intermittent production);
• Shanying/AA, Chonburi, Thailand – 300,000 metric tons per year; and
• Sun Paper, Xepon, Laos – 400,000 metric tons per year.
• Zhejiang Jingxing, Selangor, Malaysia – 800,000 metric tons per year.
Speculative pulp mills and projects:
• Kamine Development Corp., Tampa, Florida – 575,000 metric tons per year;
• Nine Dragons, Maharashtra, India – 500,000 metric tons per year; and
• Shanying, Southeast Asia – 770,000 metric tons per year.
For a longer story on recycled pulp markets and insights from a recycled pulp producer, check out the upcoming September issue of Recycling Today.
Some 275 cargo vessels were sold for scrap in the first six months of this year, up 40 percent from last year.
Despite an international trading community clamoring for more shipping options, the first half of 2021 saw 275 cargo vessels sold for scrap. That figure is up by 40 percent compared with the first six months of last year and by 33 percent compared with 2019, according to an analysis by United Kingdom based VesselsValue Ltd.
The analysis, posted online by Guy Cooper of VesselsValue, cites “extreme scrap prices” as contributing to the high dismantling rate, with ferrous scrap trading toward the high end of its historic range throughout 2021.
Cooper also points to new emissions-related environmental regulations that have caused owners of aging vessels to conclude that (along with high scrap prices) the time was right to retire portions of their fleets. He calls it “the perfect blend to see scrapping numbers blown out of the water and some impressive records to be set.
“If steel demand continues to rally the demolition scrap price for shipping, then it is likely that scrapping numbers will increase throughout the year, especially if bulker and container rates begin to soften,” writes Cooper.
High steel pricing, he comments, “encourages scrapping but [is] bad for undersupplied sectors as it heightens new [ship]building prices.”
The 275 scrapped vessels tracked by VesselsValue have a combined 11.9 million in deadweight tonnage in cargo volume and yielded a total scrap value of more than $1 billion, the company estimates. Some 130 tankers were scrapped, along with 50 bulk vessels but just 10 container ships.
“Expectedly, container scrapping numbers are down 78 percent from 2020 as the sector relishes the extreme earnings,” writes Cooper. He adds, “Even if scrap prices continue to rally upwards, it is unlikely that we will see many more containers scrapped in the second half of the year.”
Geographically in the 2021 ship dismantling sector, Bangladesh scrapped 106 vessels in the first half of this year, up 80 percent compared with the first half of last year, according to VesselsValue. India and Pakistan scrapped 53 and 51 vessels respectively, placing them second and third globally.