Oct 19, 2018

Builtrite adds Lemco Hydraulics to its portfolio Minnesota equipment firm acquires fellow material handling equipment maker, also based in Minnesota. Two Harbors, Minnesota-based Builtrite Holdings LLC has acquired Hill City, Minnesota-based Lemco Hydraulics , a designer and producer of truck-mounted and stationary material handlers and a line of material handling attachments. The acquisition positions Builtrite as the provider of its own branded equipment for the recycling and waste sectors, plus the Lemco line and the line of scrap material handling attachments made by Wisconsin-based SAS Forks , which was acquired by Builtrite in 2017. Lemco, was founded in 1967 by Dean Christensen and is now managed by his son Bruce Christensen, who will continue to serve as Lemco’s president, according to Builtrite’s announcement of the acquisition. Lemco products are marketed and sold to the solid waste and recycling; forestry, logging and saw mill; municipal services; utilities; mining; and other sectors. Bill Van Sant, executive chair and CEO of Builtrite, says the combination of the two brands “will ensure that customers across a broad spectrum of markets will have access to a full suite of complementary and advanced products. Further the new entity will leverage its integrated and long-established channels-to-markets so to ensure both existing and new customers will have an attractive alternative for purchasing advanced material handling products.” Builtrite says it plans to increase and allocate manufacturing capacity at its Two Harbors factory so it can produce both Lemco and Builtrite products there. The increase in manufacturing capacity will fulfill an expected growth in revenue as the new Lemco-Builtrite Alliance gains traction and market share, according to the firm. United States-based recycling equipment and technology provider General Kinematics Corp. (GK) has announced that information on its website is now available in multiple languages. The multi-lingual website has been designed “to extend visibility to users across the globe,” according to GK. Users can now access information from the site in English, Spanish, German, and Mandarin (or simplified) Chinese. The project, in the works for more than a year, was undertaken to provide better service and support to GK equipment owners and GK employees in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. “It’s been an investment; however, we have made a wonderful improvement to the usability of our site,” says Amy Donahue-Kelley, GK’s global marketing manager, who led the project. “Users will have further access to all of our product information and be able to make more informed decisions.” Donahue-Kelley says the GK blog, which features industry information and current news, is accessed by thousands of people around the world. GK, which was incorporated in 1960, describes itself as one of the world’s largest suppliers of vibratory processing equipment. The company says more than 50,000 GK units have been installed around the world, with many of those devices supplied to auto shredding plant operators, construction and demolition (C&D) scrap and aggregates processors, curbside-collected material recovery facility (MRF) operators and recyclers of other materials. Steel Dynamics adds to 2018 profits EAF steelmaker nets nearly $400 million in its financial third quarter. Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI)  has reported third quarter 2018 net sales of $3.2 billion and net income of $398 million, or $1.69 share. The electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaker says the quarterly results include charges of approximately $13 million associated with its acquisition of the Heartland Steel rolling operation. The figures represent a 33.3 percent increase over third quarter 2017 net sales of $2.4 billion and a 160.1 percent increase of that quarter’s net income of $153 million. Year-to-date, for the nine months ended Sept. 30, SDI’s net income is $988 million ad its net sales figure is $8.9 billion. Those numbers represent a 94.5 percent increase from 2017’s first three quarters’ $508 million net income figure and a 23.6 percent increase from 2017’s first three quarters sales total of $7.2 billion. SDI President and CEO Mark D. Millett says results for the third quarter just completed include “income from operations of $532 million and adjusted EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] of $626 million, [which] were both record highs for the company.” He adds, “Our strong financial performance was the result of record steel shipments, average steel selling price improvement, and resulting metal spread expansion across our steel operations.” SDI’s OmniSource scrap operations contributed narrower profits, according to Millett. “Earnings from our metals recycling platform declined in the quarter primarily as a result of our nonferrous operations, as shipments and commodity prices declined. In addition, China’s decision to ban certain grades of recycled material has had a negative impact on nonferrous sales volume,” he comments. Regarding the near-term future, Millett comments, “We remain confident that macroeconomic and market conditions are in place to benefit domestic steel consumption in 2019. Based on strong domestic steel demand fundamentals and customer optimism, we believe steel consumption will continue to be strong. In combination with our expansion initiatives, we believe there are firm drivers for our continued growth.” The Recycling Partnership , Falls Church, Virginia, thinks there is a lot of opportunity to improve municipal recycling efforts across the United States. According to The Recycling Partnership, about 47 percent of Americans don’t have automatic curbside recycling based on a 2016 SPC Access study. The Recycling Partnership also reports that about 60 percent of packaging is not being recovered in the home. Additionally, The Recycling Partnership reports that more than 20 percent contamination rates are costing money and time, as well as causing safety hazards for workers. “Infrastructure is lacking, there’s low performance in communities,” says Cody Marshall, vice president of technical assistance at The Recycling Partnership. “This is importance to all of us [in the recycling business]. The issue is contamination. There’s inbound contamination, and it’s affecting work streams.” During a session on community education at Recycling Today’s Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference, The Recycling Partnership asked attendees to form small groups to discuss the issue of contamination with municipal recycling. Based on group discussions, the following are some of the attendees’ biggest contamination concerns: • Plastic bags • Scrap metal • Needles and medical waste So, The Recycling Partnership told attendees there need to be strategies to improve education in order to reduce contamination that comes in. In the session, attendees discussed various strategies to combat contamination in the recycling stream to offer a return on investment. The following are things that were suggested: • Back charging haulers for contamination • Putting cameras in place to record contamination at commercial accounts • Having penalties for noncompliance • Offering community leadership programs • Banning plastic film bags According to The Recycling Partnership, community education is a key tool that can be used to reduce contamination in recycling streams. Chris Coady, senior technical assistance specialist at The Recycling Partnership, recommended material recovery facilities add education centers to their facilities. He said it’s important to make community education messaging simple. “That means having clear and concise messaging that is easy for people to understand,” Marshall said. “Another key point with education is to clarify in real words and pictures for people to understand. Talk about the real pain points to get the message [about contamination] across.” Coady also recommended that recycling operations have checklists available for people on what is and isn’t recyclable. He said some strategies for that include sending out mailers or placing tag cards on bins. Marshall added that traditional mailers and postcards are better methods to provide community education than social media. While providing education via social media is helpful, he said people are still looking for education out of mailers, postcards and tags on bins. Marshall said there’s cost to provide community education—he said it costs $1.50 to $2 for messaging to each household. However, he said some of that money can be reimbursed through partnerships and grants. It’s also a way to reduce contamination in the recycling stream. “What we’re trying to do is look in the cart and give people a tactical approach to education so that there’s minimal work to do in order to inform as many residents as possible,” Marshall said. “Clarity of the information you share is important. With strategies, think about how your marketing team works and implement that at the curb. You need to make messaging clear. We too often say people are lazy, but people want clarity they are confused.” Scrap recyclers in North America, Europe and other parts of the world who spent two decades shipping red metal scrap to China have acknowledged the disruption caused by China’s sudden restrictions on imported scrap. The Communist Party of China is less direct in acknowledging difficulties—especially regarding something caused in part by its own decisions—but metals industry analysts are seeing negative consequences for that nation stemming from its import barriers. Reuters columnist Andy Home, in a mid-October online commentary , says the import bans are a contributing factor in an unexpected global copper supply squeeze that has hit Asia hardest. Home says inventory levels are low on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE), the London Metal Exchange (LME) and the Chicago-based COMEX market. While exchange pricing may not be booming, “Physical premiums are rising,” adds Home. Copper producers, sellers and buyers in Asia, continues Home, are still in the process of “adapting to a combination of smelter outages and changing scrap dynamics.” He continues, “China’s new restrictions on the purity of copper scrap imports caused a drop in the flow of material from the rest of the world, [and] the effect was compounded in August with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on scrap from the United States.” Most of the scrap imported into China been used to make refined copper, says Home, so the scrap had fed “back into the refined metal balance very fast in China.” The disappearance of this feedstock “is adding to the broader squeeze on availability [of finished copper] in the region,” he concludes. Scrap is not the only factor, with air pollution concerns and unexpected smelter repair problems in Asia also playing a role, according to Home. Similar conclusions were reached by London-based CRU Group  in late July, in an online analysis  posted at that time. CRU’s Ibrahim Yucel and Willis Thomas wrote at that time that copper producers in China were already stating their intentions to relocate some production offshore “to use lower cost labor in other regional jurisdictions to process [nonferrous scrap], smelt the sorted material and then export the pure copper and aluminum.” While such transfers are already occurring, with plants reopening in Malaysia, Thailand and other nations, “Limits to the speed of capacity development and logistical/technical difficulties will raise the overall costs of using scrap as an input in China when processing through these markets,” the duo predicted. Both Home and the CRU analysts point out that China’s government has indicated that beyond tight scrap purity restrictions already in place, the nation may ban all scrap imports by the end of 2020. Writes Home, “No one is believing them. The country imported 1.6 million metric tons of contained copper in scrap [in 2017], according to research house CRU. It’s simply too big a gap to fill without causing mayhem in the refined metal part of the supply chain.” In the meantime, he remarks, “The appearance of more smelter bottlenecks will overlap with the potential for more upheaval in the copper scrap chain.”