Volatility has characterized many junk markets this year, adding scrap metal. Prices fell at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in April and May, mainly as a result of production shutdown due to blockades. But in June and July, scrap costs began to rise slightly and, from August and September, scrap costs seem more optimistic.
Blake Hurtik, editor-in-chief of Argus Media, told the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) in a virtual format from September 14-17, Blake Hurtik, editor-in-chief of Argus Media, reported that metal generators have higher levels of scrap demand than before the start of the pandemic. Hurtik said iron markets saw a “healthy increase from $30 to $50 per tonne” this month, adding that outdated and crushed scrap has behaved well and that the costs of wood scrap have increased by about $10 this month. He added that “export markets are also hot. “
“You see a pickup in cost demand along with the export market,” he said. “Supply has been the driving force behind scrap costs for much of the summer. “
In August, Hurtik reported that for hot-laminated coils (BLC) and bushels in the midwest higher to around $300 consistent with the ton, with a slight decrease in September. “For the September trade, we saw giant trade volumes, eager to buy volumes earlier than we see in order,” he said.
During the scrap panel, all panellists raised considerations about the recovery at the place of the energy market and how this could discard metal. Tom Knippel, vice president of commercial sales at SA Recycling, founded in Orange, California, said he doubted the place of the energy market would. recover soon, the demand for metals for pipe production and the number of platforms.
“It’s still down without recovery symptoms,” he said, noting that West Texas Intermediate’s costs have dropped some bit and oil costs are below recent standards.
Spencer Johnson, an LME industry analyst at New York-based INTL FC Stone, added that the economic outlook for the energy sector is “uncertain. “
“There are many risks, especially in terms of problems and up value risk,” he said, adding that “right now, degrees of uncertainty are leading to a risk-free approach. “
Foreign scrap request
Along with export markets, Turkey is driving cost stability, Hurtik said, adding that strong domestic demand for corrugated rods is helping to maintain costs in Turkey.
In Asia, he said containers in Taiwan were also evolving 200. Pandemic-related Indian lockdowns are also softening, and some metal orders are re-emerging a little there.
Another trend is the emergence of China as an actor in the cast iron market, he said. Before the fall of 2019, China was not very concerned as a raw cast iron customer. But this year, the country bought much more raw melt as a reaction. to emerging iron ore prices. Hurtik added that he doubted how long China will remain a large customer of raw cast iron.
“China is not the 900-pound gorilla, yet it is the 9,000-pound gorilla,” Knippel said at the roundtable, noting that China is expected to produce one billion tons of metal this year. “They were the main metal engine in five years ago, when China was exporting a lot and looking for what it had in metal costs, today we are in the same boat. Whether we get advantages from China, whether we like it or not, the Chinese market kept metal costs high enough for China to import metal in July when it normally exported. It is thrown away in the country to reduce costs and pollution. They are the engine of the global metals market. “
Johnson added: “We can place industry barriers, but China will have an impact” on the position of the metals market in the United States.
Capacity on the horizon
Rates of steel mill capacity use are also on the rise. At the beginning of the pandemic, this rate went from a low rate of 80% to almost 50%, but said it had been higher in summer and was now at almost 65%.
Hurtik noted that many metal generators were dismantled at the birth of COVID-19, however, many of them were born back online by the end of summer. In September, Hurtik reported that the following blast furnaces had restarted:
U. S. Steel Mon Valley No. 1, with 1. 5 million tons consistent with the year;
US Steel Gary Works No. 8, with a figure of 1. 2 million tons consistent with the year;
US Steel Gary Works No. 6, with a volume of 1. 36 million tons consistent with the year;
ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor No. 4, with 1. 72 million tons consistent with the year;
ArcelorMittal Burns Harbour C, with 2. 73 million tonnes in line with the year of capacity; And
Cliffs/AK Steel’s Dearborn high furnace, with a capacity of 2. 2 million consistent with the year.
In mid-September, US Steel still had two blast furnaces out of order: its Gary Works No. four with 1. 5 million tons of year-consistent capacity and its 1. 4 million-ton Granite City A consistent with the year of capacity, and ArcelorMittal has two blast damaged furnaces. 6 with 1. 51 million tons consistent with the year of capacity and its Burns Harbor D with 2. 73 million tons consistent with the year of capacity. However, all those elements are back online at some point.
Hurtik added that at least 4 arc furnaces (FAE) broke down at the beginning of the pandemic, adding the Gerdau electric arc furnace plant in Monroe, Michigan; Gerdau’s EAF plant in Jackson, Michigan; The EAF plant in Tenaris, Koppel, Pennsylvania; and the JSW USA electric arc plant in Mingo Junction, Ohio. None have returned yet, unless the Gerdau plant in Monroe. He noted that the Tenaris and Mingo Junction plants are making investments to their capacity.
“They’ve gone to the county, but they’ll come back with the concept of improving in the long run,” he said.
Despite the pandemic, there is also a lot of optimism about the new capacity of the electric furnace underway. Hurtik of Argus Media said the following plants have planned expansions of electric furnace capacity in the near future:
The new Nucor in Sedalia, Missouri, will load 450,000 tonnes of capacity in line with the year and is expected to come online in the first quarter of 2020;
The new Frostproof in Nucor, Florida, will carry 450,000 tons of capacity consistent with the year and is expected to enter service in the fourth quarter of 2020;
THE US Steel in Fairfield, Alabama, will load 1. 6 million tons of capacity consistently with the year and is expected to enter service by 2020;
The new SDI in Texas will load 3 million tons of capacity according to the year and is expected to enter service by mid-2021;
Big River Steel’s Osceola, Arkansas will increase capacity to 1. 6 million tons consistently with the year and is expected to enter service in the fourth quarter of 2020;
Gallatin, Kentucky, of Nucor, will load 1. 4 million tons of capacity according to the year and is expected to enter service by mid-2021;
The new Nucor in Brandenburg, Kentucky, will load 1. 2 million tons of capacity according to the year and is expected to enter service in 2022;
• The North Star BlueScope in Delta, Ohio will load 850,000 tons of capacity according to the year and is expected to enter service in 2022;
ArcelorMittal’s Calvert, Alabama will load 1. 6 million tons of capacity consistently with the year and is expected to enter service by 2022; And
Mesa, Arizona, of Commercial Metals Co. , will load 500,000 tons of capacity consistently with the year and is expected to enter service in 2023.
Upstate Shredding – Weitsman Recycling, based in Owego, New York, announced that he has Bob Frank on his team at Ben Weitsman in Rochester, Rochester, New York, as regional general manager and vice president of advertising accounts.
Frank arrives at Ben Weitsman in Rochester after working for thirteen years at Metalico, a competitive steel scrap recycling plant in Rochester. Frank joined the recycling industry at the age of 14, as a candidate for Samuel Frank Metal Co.
According to a press release from Upstate Shredding – Weitsman Recycling, it provides the company with an assessment of business achievement. The company also claims that Weitsman and Frank, although they have competed for many years, have a good reputation and look forward to combining their efforts. when Frank joins upstate Shredding’s team.
“I’m very happy to announce my new company with Ben Weitsman of Rochester,” Frank says. “[Owner Adam Weitsman] and I now have a combined vision to capitalize on the strengths and paintings of others in combination to take advantage of my preference for incredible visitor service and my ability to build long-term relationships with Adam’s commitment to operational excellence. That our partnership will create an unprecedented opportunity for junk consumers in the region.
Hyundai Construction Equipment Americas (HCEA), Norcross, Georgia, announced the expansion of its network of authorized brokers in North America with the addition of United Truck Sales, in Clinton Township, Michigan.
United Truck Sales is a racer of tractors, trailers and heavy trucks, and will do so, in particular, on Hyundai compact shovel devices in the north-central territory of HCEA.
“I’m very happy to climb United Truck Sales as a Hyundai compact shovel racer for the Detroit Tri-County area,” said Ed Harseim, district manager at HCEA – North Central. “We have a perfect diversity of compact blade products that continue to grow and improve with the burden of new products and features, adding our popular 3-year, 3,000-hour warranty. United Truck Sales has a unique set of product support capabilities with its ability to contain everything from semitrailers to structure equipment. They are also passionate about their business and are offering their consumers the most productive help imaginable. They are a perfect burden for Hyundai’s network of riders».
With the addition of this new dealership, Hyundai’s North American network now includes more than 75 dealerships operating in just over 165 locations, offering sales and portions for the full diversity of Hyundai hydraulic shovels, tire loaders, compaction rollers and other structure equipment.
According to Hyundai, the company’s sales, service and portion groups provide product and service education to ensure that broker partners can provide high-level assistance to meet consumers’ developing business desires. Hyundai Construction Equipment consumers.
The third day of WasteExpo Together Online began with an introductory discussion between Bloomberg and opinion columnist Adam Minter and Waste360’s director of content and marketing, Liz Bothwell, who moderated it.
Minter wrote the 2013 bestseller “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade”. He continued this with his most recent book, “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale” in 2019.
Minter’s presentation, “Things: The Hidden Frontier of Waste and Recycling,” highlights the trail of fabrics through the flow of waste.
Minter tells how in the early 2000s, while working as a journalist specializing in the recycling industry, he came up with the concept of writing an e-book about how everyday items become valuable through recycling. The first thing that caught his eye when he visited a junkyard was the Christmas lights. After running to the origin of these curtains and who recycles them, Minter found himself in China in a position specializing in the recovery of these curtains.
As a component of its presentation, Minter showed a video of a Chinese facility with a formula committed to Christmas gelatin recycling. As a component of this operation, staff load sideboard beams imported from the United States into a water crusher to cool the formula. The resulting addition of plastic, glass and copper passes through a water table where copper is separated from the rest of the softer curtains and can be harvested with a shovel at its value. This copper is then sold to soft Christmas manufacturers. it says, it is also edited and sent to a local shoe sole manufacturer that uses it in its operations. Wastewater from crushers can be reused on site.
Minter argues that this procedure illustrates a concrete example of the circular economy at work. The problem, he notes, is that thanks to a confluence of points in China that led to the ban on domestic imports of swords, the markets that were in the past. for American recyclables (even with specialized parts like Christmas lights) they have dried up.
Its conclusion is that the way we manage waste wants to change.
“I think everyone has learned in the last two years that recycling is important, essential for environmental management and our waste control regimes, but it’s not enough in itself to solve the challenge of [our waste],” Minter says.
The solution, according to Minter, lies in how we reuse materials. Minter uses the example of Good Point Recycling, an electric power recycler in Middlebury, Vermont, which sends computers, monitors and other electronic devices to Ghana.
There, these recycled electronic products are repaired if they are mandatory or sold directly in the country.
“Like other people around the world, other people in Ghana need the data highway,” Minter says. “[These are things] that were not imported for burning, imported for reuse, and because fewer Are Faces can be used and, because they have been tested in bulk before, will last a long time. If it has been installed in an American’s living room for five years, it’s probably a very smart computer. “
Minter also points out that there are corporations in Ghana where equipment that is no longer functional is stored, and that when they enter with equipment with a damaged monitor, for example, those older equipment can be separated to solve the problem.
“Most computers on those shelves would be recyclable or disposable, where they would be thrown away or dumped. And we know this continues, but in Ghana in particular, it is a valuable inventory. make things last longer,” he says.
He says laptops that can only be used for a few years in the US are not the only ones in the U. S. But it’s not the first time They can have a shelf life of 10 to 15 years in Ghana due to the price of their parts.
Minter also tells how TV repair professionals in Ghana can take decades-old TVs and fix them to give them a moment of life. The key is to have the portions to fix those systems, which can be tricky with older models.
Robin Ingenthron, owner of Good Point Recycling, has taken it very seriously to accept the price of coins in recycled electronics. Minter says Good Point staff are experts in recovering discarded electronics, which are then sold on eBay for healthy profits.
“We don’t just want to be informed from the most complex recycling systems,” Minter says. “In many cases, what we want to do is be informed and reconsider what’s going on in emerging markets because, in many ways, they’re in front of us when it comes to what it means to have a circular economy. “
While many facets of recycling are evolving despite the pandemic, recycling of electronic products has been particularly affected as more and more corporations have forced their painters to paint from home.
The webinar was moderated by Craig Boswell, co-founder and president of Batavia, Illinois, HOBI International, and featured 3 industry experts: Walter Alcorn, vice president of environmental affairs at the Consumer Technology Association based in Arlington, Virginia; Sean Magann, vice president of sales and marketing at Sims Lifecycle Services, founded in Chicago; and Greg Voorhees, Director of Recycling in Minneapolis, Minnesota, MRM Recycling.
After a brief advent of Boswell, the three speakers discussed their opinion on a variety of issues that have an effect on the electronic recycling industry, the most vital of the moment, COVID-19.
For the electronics industry, COVID-19 has had a primary effect in more than six months. It’s harder to figure out how long those effects will last.
“Certainly, in the short term, COVID-19 is the big impact,” Alcorn said. “For the industry as a whole, it is a type of combined set. We have had several corporations whose sales increase COVID-19. We see a lot more remote work, distance learning. “
Alcorn added that the chains of origin are feeling the effects of the pandemic as it becomes difficult to respond to the demands, and Magann echoed this view.
Demand for more cloud area has higher in large part because of COVID-19. Increased use of Netflix, Zoom, Dropbox and other online resources has driven corporations to expand their knowledge centers. “More and more hardware, the hardware we have on our desktops, will do less work,” Magann said. “I think the strain to go back this material, even with COVID-19, will stretch. “He added that much of what depended on hardware now uses the cloud, such as cable set-top boxes.
“It’s been hard for businesses and Americans to be fair about getting the PC hardware they want,” he said. Employees who used to use only desktop PCs in the workplace now want laptops at home. Students who used to share a PC at home, with their siblings or families now want theirs to attend online education.
“For the last 8 years and a part, while working at MRM, I was running in a home office, so I was used to running out of the house,” Voorhes said. “Even though I had an office in the house, it replaced my life radically because suddenly my wife came to the house, my children came to the house, the router couldn’t take care of it. “
Voorhees added that many states were final collections for months, making it even more complicated for those who can simply return to the material.
“As we look to the future, we are looking to perceive the US landscape as a whole. How the customer’s habit will replace dropping their TV or other hardware into a collection event,” Voorhees said. But he added that collection opportunities are becoming due to COVID -19 and that the resulting demanding situations can also have an effect on numbers.
If the pandemic is a global challenge, it is the only global challenge affecting the source strings.
“With all the concentrate in China, it’s a number one supplier, or a position where the chain of origin exists for the electronics industry,” Alcorn said.
He added that the globalization of goods and products had existed for decades, but predicted that globalization would be ed up to date. “I think it’s going to put a lot of economic pressure on the evolved countries,” he said.
It’s too early to say when the chains of origin will return to a more general level, but Alcorn said he believes the e-recycling industry will have to keep adapting for some time.
“The vital thing to recognize is for the electronic source chain, the festival is so ridiculously difficult, things were becoming all the time to start,” Alcorn said. “The sense of play has developed, before you have 3 or 4 suppliers imaginable in East Asia, you are now looking in more countries, more amenities around the world. On the contrary, we will have to see how this industrial war unfolds. I don’t see many of these brands and suppliers of electronic components returning to the United States. States. “