Igneo Technologies hires chief strategy officer – Recycling Today
Lars Radowitz has more than 20 years of experience in the recycling industry.
Igneo Technologies LLC, an Atlanta-based global recycling company that transforms low-grade electronic scrap into high-grade, sustainable copper concentrate, has named Lars Radowitz as its chief strategy officer, effective Sept. 1. Prior to this appointment, Radowitz worked for more than 20 years at Aurubis, a large copper producer that’s headquartered in Germany.
“I am honored and excited to help carry out Igneo’s vision for the future,” Radowitz says. “Igneo provides a unique value proposition for their suppliers and customers, while at the same time operating a truly sustainable solution to e-waste.”
In his previous role as vice president of raw materials recycling at Aurubis, Radowitz focused on purchasing raw material feed for recycling and the company’s global market strategy.
“Lars’ extensive industry experience is a tremendous asset to Igneo,” says Igneo President and CEO Danish Mir. “His knowledge will help propel the business forward as we grow our footprint in Europe, the United States and beyond.”
Igneo operates a metal recovery plant in Isbergues, France, with an infeed capacity of 30,000 metric tons per year. The company is constructing a second plant in Savannah, Georgia, that is expected to process 90,000 metric tons per year once it is online in early 2024.
Domestic steelmaking is lagging last year’s pace, while scrap export demand is inconsistent.
Ferrous scrap recyclers awaiting a price rebound after a downward summer trend are not finding relief as that season turns to autumn. Steel output figures in the United States remain sluggish, and export demand is not necessarily picking up the slack.
On the supply side, even though pricing has discouraged some collectors and dealers from selling scrap forward, factory and demolition activity in the U.S. has allowed supply to meet the tepid demand.
At the end of August, the Raw Material Data Aggregation Service (RMDAS) of Pittsburgh-based MSA Inc. tracked a noteworthy phenomenon from July 20 to Aug. 19.
Although just this May, steel mills on average were paying $185 more per ton for prime or prompt ferrous scrap compared with 1 ton of ferrous shred, three months later, that cavernous gap had disappeared, with most of the premium vanishing in July and August.
Mill scrap purchases tracked by the RMDAS July 20 to Aug. 19 showed mills on average paying just $9 per ton more for the RMDAS prompt industrial composite grade compared with No. 2 shredded scrap.
In mid-September, Davis Index is reporting lower scrap prices in Turkey and restrained buying from other common U.S. scrap export destinations, such as Bangladesh and India. Domestically as of Sept. 13, the pricing service says busheling is down another $22 per ton so far in September, while heavy melting scrap (HMS) is down about $20 per ton in the same region.
On the domestic demand front, the Washington-based American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) says in the week ending Sept. 10, domestic steel production was 1.723 million tons, which was up 0.5 percent compared with the prior week.
However, the most recent weekly output figure represents a 6.3 percent decrease from the identical week in the previous year, when 1.839 million tons of steel were made. AISI has the current mill capability utilization (capacity) rate at 78.2 percent compared with 83.3 percent at this time last year.
Year-to-date production through Sept. 10 is at slightly more than 63 million tons, says AISI, while the industry’s average capacity rate this year stands at of 79.8 percent. The volume figure is down 3.8 percent from slightly more than 65.5 million tons made in the same time frame in 2021, when the capacity rate averaged 81 percent.
While conventional wisdom holds that lower scale prices eventually lead to a supply shortage-driven price rebound, it looks like recyclers will wait another month to see if that tipping point has been reached.
The organization proposes eight tactics taken from case studies across the country that can help minimize the material being landfilled and incinerated.
The state of Massachusetts throws out about 5.5 million tons of waste annually, but, of that, about 40 percent comprises “long-banned materials such as glass and metal containers, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, leaves and yard waste, recyclable paper, cardboard and paperboard, certain plastic containers, wood waste and tires,” all of which can and should be recycled, Zero Waste Massachusetts says in a recently released report.
“There is no silver bullet; we must deploy several tactics to reduce waste,” the report says. “With a spotlight on this problem, public education, increased resources from [Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection], better infrastructure and a commitment from municipalities, state legislators, the governor and other decision-makers, we can vastly improve the problem of too much banned waste going to landfills and incinerators.”
The report cites successes on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts; in Seattle; in the state of Vermont; and in San Francisco where various measures have reduced the amount of material landfilled or incinerated.
Based on those case studies, Zero Waste Massachusetts recommends the state take the following steps to minimize the volume of material landfilled or burned:
“Our solid waste crisis requires that Massachusetts, along with the other states and cities … make better progress on reducing waste,” the report says. “Waste bans, properly implemented, reduce the amount of material sent for burial or burning. Waste bans are a critical tool to help us reduce the air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions associated with landfilling and incinerating waste, improve public health and prevent the need to build new solid waste facilities.”
The report analyzes fueling methods in terms of their energy usage, well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions, fuel cost, total cost and stage of commercialization.
The Solid Waste Association of North America’s (SWANA’s) Applied Research Foundation (ARF) has issued a report assessing the viability of electricity and other alternative fuels for solid waste and recycling collection vehicles.
According to a release from the association, the publication analyzes electricity, hydrogen fuel cells, compressed and renewable natural gas and ultra-low sulfur and renewable diesel in terms of their energy usage, well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions, fuel cost, total cost and stage of commercialization.
The report, “Evaluation of Electricity and Other Alternative Fuels for Solid Waste and Recycling Collection Vehicles,” follows the ARF report released in March 2022, “Efficient Management of Waste & Recycling Collection Resources,” which presented tools and best practices for streamlining collection operations.
“Considering the environmental impact and rising cost of diesel, it is important to evaluate alternatives available for solid waste and recycling collection trucks, which are among the lowest fuel economy of all over-the-road vehicles,” states David Biderman, SWANA executive director and CEO. “This new report provides collection fleet managers with useful data and analyses for the fuel options currently on the market,” Biderman adds.
“We are proud to be able to provide this in-depth report on this important and timely topic,” says Jeremy O’Brien, SWANA’s director of applied research. “SWANA would like to recognize and thank the organizations that comprise the ARF’s Collection Group Subscribers who identified and voted on this topic as well as supported and assisted in the research.”
The full report is currently only available to SWANA ARF subscribers. To learn more about the report and to download the executive summary, click here.
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Asheville Waste Paper has processed OCC and other recovered paper grades in western North Carolina for more than 80 years.
For more than 80 years, Asheville Waste Paper Co. Inc. has offered recycling services from its location in Asheville, North Carolina.
The family-owned business launched in 1941 after Carl McMahan, a garbage truck driver for the city of Asheville, noticed the city was sending what he believed was too much paper and aluminum to landfills that could be recycled. McMahan started collecting cans and paper at his home, and he eventually opened a recycling facility in Asheville.
Over the years, the company has stayed in McMahan’s family. He retired in 1962 and passed the business on to his son, Paul McMahan, and Paul eventually passed the business on to his daughter, Annette McMahan Pace, and her husband, Cam Pace. In 2020, Trey Pace and his wife, Gabe, became the fourth generation of the family to manage the recycling business.
Carl started the business by operating a hand-press baler out of a small storefront in town. Today, the company runs a recycling facility on a 2-acre site with two industrial-sized balers, an industrial-sized shredder, several trucks, a truck scale and a team of 13 employees.
Gabe describes the business as “a staple for recycling” in the Asheville community, and the company offers what she calls double-sorted recycling. In 2021, Asheville Waste Paper processed more than 15.3 million pounds of old corrugated containers (OCC) and other paper grades.
“We are one of the only non-single-stream recyclers in western North Carolina,” she says. “We offer shredding services to the public and accept recycling materials from businesses, offices and local families who will drop off their household recycling. We also handle the maintenance and installation of balers for local businesses.”
She continues, “Customer service and strong family values set us apart, and that’s what people find memorable about our company and what keeps them coming to us for their recycling needs.”
Asheville Waste Paper is focused on processing OCC and other paper grades. Gabe says the company is always navigating the ever-changing market dynamics for recovered paper.
“Some months are really good and we have a lot go out. In months where prices drop, we hold material,” she says. “But even in the good times and the bad times, we’re still shipping material. We constantly find outlets to keep revenue coming in.”
The company has two balers it uses on-site as well as an industrial shredder, two guillotines and forklifts. About three years ago, Asheville Waste Paper decided to invest in an 8043HS-10T75 single-ram horizontal autotie baler from American Baler Corp., Bellevue, Ohio, to replace one of its balers, which made operations run much more smoothly with fewer maintenance demands.
In more recent years, Gabe adds that Asheville Waste Paper has seen increased demand for the company’s shredding services. She attributes the increased demand to the pandemic.
“With COVID, everyone was stuck at home. In 2020 when everyone was under quarantine, I feel that’s when a lot of households and businesses used that opportunity to do some spring cleaning,” she says. “We saw a nice influx of documents brought in for our shredding services.”
She says the shredding business has stayed consistently busy the past three years. The company operates a top-feed shredder from St. Louis-based Williams Patent Crusher and Pulverizer Co. Inc. to serve that business segment.
Even though Asheville Waste Paper has grown in size over the years and invested in equipment upgrades, Gabe says the company has continued to sort material by hand rather than rely on equipment such as screens and optical sorters to help with processing.
“We are considered a double-sorted facility, meaning that when the material is brought to us, it is already sorted and then we pick through it by hand to ensure there [are] no contaminants, plastic or waxed coatings,” she says. “All materials we handle are sorted by hand even after they are brought in to us sorted to begin with. This allows us to only process and ship the cleanest materials possible.”
Gabe adds that Asheville Waste Paper clearly communicates what materials it can and can’t process to ensure lower contamination to make it easier on the company’s employees. She says, “We’ve started to get really strict about what’s accepted here. We have a huge sign posted on our yard fence that describes what can and cannot be left on the property. That in itself has really helped us.”
Although it can be particularly challenging for recycling businesses to find and keep workers to hand sort materials, especially in today’s tight labor market, Gabe says Asheville Waste Paper has retained most of its sorters for the past decade.
“We take amazing care of them,” she says. “These guys are the backbone of this company. We provide all their safety gear, OSHA [Occupational Safety & Health Administration] vests and new steel-toed boots each Christmas. We take care of them, making sure everything they need is provided as far as making their jobs safer and easier.”
Since becoming an owner of the company about two years ago, Gabe says she and her husband, Trey, have focused on finding unique ways to support the company’s sorters.
“For instance, in winter if it’s super cold, we make our guys come inside every hour to take a 10-minute break,” Gabe says. “We give them hand warmers and try to really make sure they have anything they need. They are in sun, rain, snow and wind. These people are the backbone of this company, so they are our top priority.
“We maintain a family feeling every day. We have a really close, tightknit group, and I think that is why some of [these sorters] have been here for 20 years or longer.”