The company purchased the Bear Island paper mill in Ashland, Virginia, for about $35 million in 2018. The company is also closing two of its tissue plants in Pennsylvania.
Cascades Inc., Kingsey Falls, Quebec, has announced that it is moving forward on converting its White Birch Bear Island paper mill in Ashland, Virginia, to a containerboard machine to produce lightweight, 100-percent-recycled linerboard and medium for the North American market.
Cascades initially acquired the Bear Island paper mill from Greenwich, Connecticut-based White Birch Paper in 2018 for $34.2 million. According to a news release from Cascades, the company says it plans to convert the mill to containerboard by the first quarter of 2021.
The total cost of the Bear Island conversion will be about $380 million, which includes the initial $35 million acquisition cost paid to White Birch Paper in 2018. To finance the equity portion of the Bear Island mill conversion, Cascades says it has entered into an agreement with CIBC Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets and BMO Capital Markets on behalf of a syndicate of underwriters, pursuant to which Cascades will issue from treasury and the underwriters will purchase on a “bought deal basis” 7.441 million common shares at a price of $16.80 per common share for gross proceeds of about $125 million. Following the completion of this offering, the equity requirements of the Bear Island mill project will be fully financed, Cascades states.
According to Cascades, the Bear Island plant will have an annual production capacity of about 465,000 tons and is scheduled to start up by the fourth quarter of 2022. It will operate at about 80 percent of capacity by the end of 2023, reaching 100 percent by the end of 2025.
“This investment, one of the largest in our company’s history, is a decisive and very important strategic move in the modernization of our packaging assets,” says Mario Plourde, president and CEO of Cascades. “By adding the Bear Island mill to our platform, more than 60 percent of our containerboard manufacturing capacity will be in the top quartile of the industry. In addition to offering a unique development platform, this plant will strengthen our geographic positioning and presence in the U.S. and will enhance the competitiveness of our asset base and our product offering regardless of economic conditions.
“From an operational standpoint, Bear Island will also optimize the flexibility of our manufacturing platform by providing a product offering that will be complementary to its sister plant Greenpac, located in Niagara Falls,” Plourde adds. “Bear Island will also offer 100-percent-recycled products with light basis weights. Greatly valued by our current and future customers, these eco-responsible products are particularly well suited for e-commerce.”
Charles Malo, president and chief operating officer at Cascades Containerboard Packaging, says the Bear Island mill “will be equipped with the latest technology and will be able to offer one of the lightest and high-end 100-percent-recycled containerboard products on the market.”
Allan Hogg, vice president and chief financial officer at Cascades, adds that the company is “confident” it will reach its targeted leverage ratio by the end of 2023 for financing on this project. During the project development period, the company says it plans to limit capital investment to approximately $200 million annually, excluding the Bear Island project. The project will add about $190 million to this envelope in 2021 and $120 million in 2022.
Cascades has also announced that it is progressively and permanently closing its tissue production and conversion operations at its plants in Ransom, Pennsylvania, and Pittston, Pennsylvania, between Dec. 7 and Jan. 31, 2021.
According to a news release from Cascades, the two paper machines at the Ransom plant have a total annual production capacity of 50,000 tons of tissue paper. Currently, the conversion of this volume into 6 million cases of product occurs primarily at the Pittston plant. These volumes will be moved to other Cascades plants and filled with additional capacity. The two sites employ a total of 229 workers.
“The aging equipment of these facilities, the low profitability, the high logistic costs and our recently announced investments in other production and converting units in the U.S. have prompted us to move production to our other sites to optimize operational efficiency,” says Jean-David Tardif, president and chief operating officer of Cascades Tissue Group. “The closure of these units is part of our ongoing strategic initiatives to improve the Tissue Group’s profitability. We would like to reassure our customers that Cascades’ service and product quality levels will not be impacted by this decision.”
Cascades reports that the company plans to work to mitigate the impact of this announcement on its employees at its Ransom and Pittston locations by offering them options to transfer to other Cascades’ business units where possible. Tardif adds, “I want to thank every one of our employees at the Ransom and Pittston operations for their loyalty and dedication over the years. I would also like to thank them in advance for their professionalism and commitment to continuing to serve our customers until the closures of the facilities.”
Closing the Loop, Amsterdam, completed a pilot project with goal of shipping lithium-ion batteries from Nigeria to Europe to be recycled.
This year, a pilot project was able to successfully ship lithium-ion batteries from Nigeria to Europe for recycling. Closing the Loop, Amsterdam, partners with electronic scrap collection networks in Africa to recycle those materials. For the pilot, Closing the Loop wanted to ship lithium-ion batteries sourced specifically from Nigeria to Europe in a way that was safe.
Closing the Loop released a white paper on the project looking into the opportunity for urban mining for end-of-life cellphone batteries and at how a new circular business model can facilitate this.
“The ability to source materials from old electronics can have immense impacts, including a reduced need for mining materials, particularly conflict minerals,” the white paper states. “The main learnings presented in this paper involve the development of a collection network, incentive creation and collaboration. The results of the pilot project are important for learning the whole industry.”
The white paper reports that the issue of electronic scrap ending up as waste in low- and middle-income countries is becoming a bigger problem. The report says e-scrap generation is growing in those countries with few options for recycling and repair.
Call2Recycle, Atlanta, served as a consultant on this project.
“We shared some of our experiences in the difficulty of moving batteries across borders,” says Carl Smith, president at Call2Recycle. “For years, we’ve had to deal with that issue, not just with lithium-ion batteries but also nickel-cadmium, in moving them to Japan, Korea, France, Canada, etc., with how expensive it is and bureaucratic it is and how it proves to be such an impediment to increasing recycling rates.”
The pilot project started in late 2017, and collection of lithium-ion batteries began in 2018 and ran through April of this year, when the batteries were received by a recycler in Europe. Closing the Loop’s white paper indicates challenges in the pilot project:
Closing the Loop says it was successful in its pilot project. Through the project, 5,000 kilograms (or about 11,000 pounds) of batteries were sourced and shipped from Nigeria to the port of Antwerp, Belgium. Those batteries are estimated to contain at least 1,250 kilograms (or about 2,750 pounds) of cobalt. Closing the Loop reports that the batteries were received by a recycler to be recycled back into materials that will be used for new batteries eventually. Additionally, the project involved the informal sector in Nigeria in the collection process, leading to more income generation for the local community.
Closing the Loop adds that three of its customers were eager to be involved in the pilot project and contributed to covering the costs associated with it. However, the required administration and documentation for shipments related to this pilot project were costly and complicated, and Closing the Loop says that was one obstacle for the pilot.
“Globally, our hope is that [this pilot project] might bring some recognition to some of the regulatory obstacles to achieving battery recycling,” Smith of Call2Recycle says, adding that “uniform mechanisms” are needed to receive and process information to expedite the movement of batteries. “Every place in the world needs their own sufficient processor to achieve any kind of recycling rate. Hopefully, in terms of the Basel Convention, it will lead to improvements as far as the management of this waste.”
Recycler is highly critical of terminology found in Basel Action Network (BAN) statements and press releases.
The Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN) has targeted the problem of unsafe and environmental unsound electronics practices throughout this century. The group has focused in particular on the shipment of obsolete electronics from the developed world to the developing world, at times finding places where unsafe dismantling and disposal methods occur.
Subsequently, the recycling industry has put in place audit-dependent certification systems designed to adhere to laws put in place by governments to pinch the flow of electronic scrap to overseas buyers with unsound practices (or inadequate waste handling infrastructure).
Robin Ingenthron of Vermont-based Good Point Recycling says he understands BAN’s focus on the issue, if not necessarily its use of GPS trackers to look for noncompliant behavior. (Ingenthron’s company was implicated by one such tracking device that ended up in Hong Kong in 2019.)
In its Oct. 7 news release, BAN says the products it tracked consisted of four nonworking LCD monitors that made their way to Guatemala via a textiles exporter. The devices were donated to the Dell/Goodwill partnership known as Dell Reconnect. BAN says this also marks the third time it has found the Dell/Goodwill Reconnect program exporting e-waste "in likely violation of the importing country's laws and Dell's own corporate policy."
Although not necessarily defending parties in that transaction, Ingenthron’s complaint has more to do with phrasing used by BAN in its news releases that, in his view, create false impressions that often go unquestioned by media outlets running the news releases.
In a blog post, Ingenthron questions BAN’s use of the word “waste” to describe refurbished or refurbishable equipment, and the word “likely” to describe whether shipments of such materials to developing nations entail a legal violation.
Ingenthron writes that the terms “’used goods’ and ‘waste’ are defined separately in international law, and that the key to guilt is intent. Otherwise, every brand new item that landed overseas - if it failed under warranty, or was damaged in shipping - would be a violation of international law.”
He continues, “BAN has, for two decades, tried to erase the fact that the most knowledgeable actors, the ones most in control of the trade, the purchasers least likely to waste money, are the overseas buyers. They do not pay to ship ‘waste’ with the intent to avoid costs they would certainly not incur, in the rich nations where they purchase surplus goods.”
Ingenthron says BAN uses select phrasing “to define what hard-working poor people are attempting to purchase as ‘waste’ and as ‘likely’ illegal, implying that intent to purchase for reuse does not matter; that even if BAN is responsible for the device being nonworking [and] nonrepairable, that the traders were engaged in criminality.”
BAN concludes its Oct. 7 news release by stating, “BAN continues to use GPS trackers on a regular basis to ensure downstream due diligence of e-waste movements and makes use of them as a verification tool in their own ethical Electronics Recycling Certification—e-Stewards.”
Jim Puckett, executive director of BAN, shared his comments on the monitor shipments to Guatemala with Recycling Today via email, writing: “It is time to cease using the developing world as garbage and broken equipment collectors for the rich industrialized countries. This results in the export of harm and the ultimate diffusion of precious resources. This has been [the] conclusion not only of the environmental community, 188 governments and hundreds of ITAD (information technology asset disposition) leaders globally (e.g. the Coalition of American Electronics Recyclers (CAER), but it is the conclusion of Dell and Goodwill as well. Our concern is that Dell and Goodwill while talking the talk are not doing all they can to enforce their important policy.”
Austrian equipment maker will double its capacity with new headquarters.
Spittal an der Drau, Austria-based shredding technology provider Lindner Recyclingtech has broken ground on a new factory complex in nearby Spittal-Ost. The firm says the new building will double its existing capacity.
“In addition to a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, the new headquarters will become an international Centre of Excellence for waste recovery and recycling – in keeping with the circular economy concept,” the firm says of the 45,000-square-meter (480,000-square-foot) campus underway.
The company, founded in Austria in 1948, opened the doors of its current factory in the 1940s, when it manufactured sawmill equipment. Lindner says it began a transformation toward becoming Lindner Recyclingtech in the late 1980s when it became “one of the first [that] started to delve into shredding and waste processing.”
“At the moment, the industry is undergoing a major change,” says Manuel Lindner, the company’s owner and CEO. “Recycling rates and quality requirements for end materials are constantly rising, and so we are continuing to develop new systems—systems that enable our clients to meet these requirements. To ensure that we can continue to do this efficiently, we are doubling our capacity and relying on the latest production technologies that meet industry 4.0 standards.”
The new campus will include what Lindner Recyclingtech calls a robot-assisted manufacturing facility and a modern logistics center, plus an academy focusing on recycling technology.
Michael Lackner, managing director of the firm, says, “We were one of the industry’s pioneers and have accumulated an enormous amount of application expertise. Today, we see ourselves not only as a machine manufacturer and technology partner but also as a source of knowledge for our clients. That’s why it is so important to us to constantly expand this know-how, develop new solutions and systematically prepare and pass on the knowledge gained. We are looking forward to welcoming you soon to the new home of recycling.”
Lindner says it manufactures machines and system components that are exported to nearly 100 countries, including stationary and mobile shredders, systems for plastics recycling, scrap wood processing and solid recovered fuel production.
Recycling association says definitions of high-purity ferrous scrap and reprocessed plastic grades could follow those for nonferrous metals.
The Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) says the government of China is making progress in creating “quality standards for mechanically recycled secondary raw materials.”
For several years, various agencies in China’s government, including its Ministry of Ecology and the Environment (MEE) and its General Administration of Customs (GACC), have focused on restrictions placed on what it often refers to as “foreign garbage” that it classifies as waste.
In the nonferrous metals sector, the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) has published Guobiao Standards (GB/T) for aluminum, brass and copper scrap grades as: GB/T38470-2019 for brass; GB/T38471-2019 for copper; and GB/T38472-2019 for aluminum alloys. The GB/T standards have been designed to allow some grades of nonferrous scrap to enter Chinese ports beyond Jan. 1, 2021, when “waste” shipments have been banned.
Now, BIR says it has learned the SAC is drafting GB/T standards for iron and steel secondary raw materials that have been mechanically recycled.
As well, BIR says the SAC is working in cooperation with the Chinese National Committee of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to draft “a series of GB/T Standards for ‘Plastics – Recycled Plastics’ that will include polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), mixed polyolefins, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polystyrene (PS), polycarbonate (PC), polyamide (PA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and poly(methyl methacrylat (PMMA).”
There is no word from BIR on whether any paper grades are being considered for reclassification, although two different traders Recycling Today has spoken with say they are hearing the old newspapers (ONP), or the news and pams grade as it is known in Europe, is reportedly being discussed as the first to be reclassified for importing purposes. Old corrugated containers (OCC) is the most commonly imported recovered fiber grade in China. Recycled-content pulp is currently allowed entry.
According to BIR, the new Chinese standards “set very high quality standards for secondary raw materials,” having “the same ultimate purpose of distinguishing between unprocessed ‘waste and scrap’ and ‘mechanically recycled’ secondary raw materials.”
BIR, in an October 7 news release, says the standards serve a similar purpose as European regulations for and definitions of iron and steel, aluminum and aluminum alloy scrap, citing EU Council Regulation No. 333/2011 for ferrous and aluminum materials; EU Commission Regulation No. 715/2013 for copper; and EU Commission Regulation No. 1179/2012 for glass cullet glass.
In an interview to be broadcast as part of the Oct. 20-22 Paper & Plastics Recycling International Conference, Adina Renee Adler, a vice president with the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), cites such definitions and standards in China, Indonesia and elsewhere as a trend.
Adler says global scrap traders used to engage in transactions based on an understanding between the buyer and seller. Increasingly, she comments, each global transaction “has to pass the scrutiny of governments.”
Adding to the difficulties, says Adler, can be the uneven amount of training received by customs officials and inspectors in overseas ports. To such under-trained personnel, even compliant secondary raw material shipments may be viewed as a waste product rather than an industrial feedstock with value.
Regarding China’s approach, BIR says, “For these regulations and standards to be legitimized, it is important that the framework legislation in the United Nations Basel Convention, inter alia, explicitly recognizes that recycling of organics, of metals and of other inorganic materials is through ‘mechanical recycling’, as well as other technologies and techniques.”
As the Jan. 1, 2021, deadline on scrap imports draws near in China, producers of metal, paper and board, and plastic products there seem to have communicated to their government that secondary raw materials imports in some form will be necessary, in the BIR’s words, “to fulfill future material needs of its industries.”
The drafted GB/T standards for brass scrap can be found on this webpage; for copper scrap on this webpage; and for aluminum alloys on this webpage.