Charles George Companies

Jul 9, 2020

Wheelabrator acquires Charles George Companies Inc. CGC specializes in residential, commercial and industrial waste collection as well as C&D material disposal and recycling. Wheelabrator Technologies , with U.S. headquarters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, announced that it has acquired Londonderry, New Hampshire-based Charles George Companies Inc. (CGC) . CGC specializes in residential, commercial and industrial waste collection as well as construction and demolition (C&D) material disposal and recycling. To meet its disposal and recycling objectives, CGC operates Fitchburg, Massachusetts-based AKS Recycling Inc., a 7.5-acre transfer station and recycling facility. According to the company, it processes 5,000 tons per month out of its 30,000-square-foot material recycling facility (MRF) at the site. The company also offers temporary dumpster, roll-off and compaction equipment rental. “I am pleased to announce that last week on July 1, Wheelabrator Technologies reached financial close on the purchase of Charles George Companies Inc., a family-owned and operated waste disposal and recycling business well-known for delivering high-quality customer service in Massachusetts and New Hampshire since its start in 1959,” Wheelabrator Technologies President  and CEO Bob Boucher told Waste Today. “I would like to welcome CGC and its employees into our Wheelabrator family. CGC is a third-generation waste business led by Christopher Karras and Karen George. The company has grown substantially in recent years beyond transport and sustainable waste removal to include a variety of waste management, sorting and recycling services across New England. We appreciate the confidence the family has placed in us to run their business in the future under the guidance of Wheelabrator management. This transaction represents our entry into the collections business in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.” Wheelabrator is a vertically integrated business with collection, transfer and disposal capacity. This includes waste-by-rail, landfill and waste-to-energy assets supported by a team of 1,700 employees. Altogether, the company says it owns or operates roughly 40 strategically located assets in the U.S. and the U.K. These assets include its Stamford, Connecticut-based Tunnel Hill Partners and City Hill Carting & Recycling locations. Wheelabrator and Tunnel Hill Partners were acquired independently by Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets , the New York City-based division of  Macquarie Asset Management , last year “with plans for future growth,” the company notes. Denver-based Recycle Colorado says it will focus on the theme “Building a Circular Economy in the Rockies” at its online Summit for Recycling event, scheduled for Aug. 25-26, 2020. “Colorado’s real estate, local and state business development incentives and current infrastructure puts us in a prime position to explore circularity and support its buildout,” says Kristin Kim Haynes, executive director of Recycle Colorado. “Having experts from OEDIT [the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade], the City of Boulder and the Arizona State University Global Institute of Sustainability take part in the conference provides a much needed ‘meeting-of-the-minds’ to plan and implement circular economies within manufacturing, organics, construction and packaging.” Programming and presentations have been designed to help attendees “learn the importance of building circular economies and transforming the way we design, make and use materials; how Colorado is focusing on circularity; and [learn about] the City of Boulder’s 2020 Circular Boulder publication,” says the organization. Adds Recycle Colorado , “A circular system for materials will create new jobs, enhance infrastructure and technology, as well as meet international sustainability initiatives.” A statistic gaining attention in the United States in early July was the surging number of new COVID-19 cases in several Western and Southern U.S. states. The new caseload has not yet checked ongoing modest gains to steel output in the U.S., however. The Washington-based American Iron & Steel Institute has reported that 1.27 million tons of steel was made in the U.S. in the week ending July 4, 2020. That represents a 2.3 percent increase from output the previous week, ending June 27. The mill operating capacity rate rose to 56.6 percent in early July, inching up from the 55.4 percent capacity rate in the final week of June 2020. Steel production figures in the U.S. remain far below their pre-COVID-19 counterparts from 2019. For the week ending July 4, 2020, total output was down 31.6 percent from the comparable week in 2019. In early July 2019, the mill capacity rate was 79.7 percent. The onset of COVID-19 and subsequent restrictions in mid-March in the U.S. quickly changed the steel production landscape in America. Mills operated at 79.4 percent capacity rate the week ending March 21, 2020, before plunging to a rate as low as 51.1 percent for the week ending May 2, 2020. Among the numerous economic ripple effects of COVID-19 have been disruptions to the partially closed recycling loop of aluminum beverage cans. While Americans continue to drink canned beer and soft drinks even while staying at home more, restrictions on recycling programs have caused fewer of those empty used beverage containers (UBCs) to re-enter the aluminum supply chain. According to an analysis by Platts, republished online by the Hellenic Shipping News, producers of aluminum can sheet in the United States have been importing aluminum from Latin America to help fill the gap created by UBCs not making their way back to secondary smelters. The analysis notes the average aluminum can is made with 73 percent recycled content. In mid-2020, a combination of strong demand for canned beverages in the U.S. and caution in collecting and sorting  by recycling companies and agencies in America has created a temporary wobble in the circular market. In America’s largest state, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order  on June 22 allowing grocers and retailers to choose if they would like to redeem bottle and cans, or continue not to through mid-August. That order has been in place since early March. In states with deposit-return bottle bills, statistics point to a severe downturn in UBC collections in the late first quarter and in the second quarter of 2020. Scott Breen, the vice president of sustainability with the Washington-based Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI) calculated as of early June that about 70 million cans and bottles had gone unredeemed in Michigan each week it deemed UBC collection as a non-essential activity. The CMI estimates from 40 to 45 percent of collected UBCs come from the 10 states that have bottle bills, including California and Michigan. Says Breen, “At the end of the day we need that material; manufacturers need it.” On the demand side, meanwhile, a representative from a U.S. can production facility tells Platts demand for canned beverages is “very strong,” adding, “All I know is we’re making every can we can make.” In the first quarter of 2020, with the epidemic just starting in the U.S., demand for canned beer rose by 6.7 percent and for canned soft drinks by 9.3 percent, according to CMI figures cited by Platts. In the U.S., just one quarter of canned beverages are sold in bars or restaurants, with the other three quarters consumed at home, according to a beer producer quoted by Platts. Although the dining out venue sales have dropped dramatically, sales to the dominant home market have soared. “We are struggling to get cans,” the beer producer tells Platts. Buyers of aluminum can sheet or the recycled-content ingots used to make it have been turning to Mexico and Brazil for replacement supply. In those markets, according to the can producer interviewed by Platts, demand for cans has dropped because they are used “almost exclusively in bars and restaurants” in two nations where restrictions and public caution have kept such venues empty. Prices paid for UBCs by can sheet mills rose to 65 percent of the value of primary aluminum in late June, according to Platts, well above what it considers a more “typical” 58 percent figure. Los Angeles-based CarbonLITE Holdings LLC says it has expanded capacity at its Dallas plant in order to provide more recycled-content polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to its customers. The company, which calls itself the world’s largest recycler of plastic beverage bottles, says it collectively processes more than 7 billion bottles annually at its facilities in Dallas, Riverside, California, and Reading, Pennsylvania. CarbonLITE say its recycled PET (rPET) can be made made into new bottles in a closed-loop, bottle-to-bottle system. The company’s customers include Coca-Cola, Nestle Waters North America and PepsiCo. The 220,000 square-foot, $62 million Dallas plant opened in 2017. Equipment being added there as part of the expansion includes an additional extrusion line. “We are gratified to be able to provide more raw material to help our customers meet their ambitious goals to increase the amount of recycled plastic they use in their beverage containers and to meet their sustainability targets,” says CarbonLITE CEO Leon Farahnik. By enabling customers to avoid the use of virgin plastic produced from petroleum, each of CarbonLITE’s facilities prevents the release of more 60,000 tons of carbon emissions annually, says the firm. In addition to rPET for bottles, the company says its PinnPACK Packaging division specializes in food packaging made from recycled plastic. “ CarbonLITE is committed to environmental stewardship,” says Farahnik “Recycling is an essential tool in reducing greenhouse gasses and environmental waste. By turning used PET bottles into new PET bottles and products, we are able to conserves virgin resources, reduce landfill, help keep our oceans clean and capitalize on the energy already invested in making existing plastic products.”