Austria’s Heinzel Group says it has purchased a UPM newsprint mill in that nation and is considering the conversion.
Laakirchen, Austria-based Heinzel Group says it has entered into a share purchase agreement with Finland-based UPM to acquire UPM Kymmene Austria GmbH and its subsidiaries in Steyrermühl, Upper Austria. The deal is contingent on approval from relevant regulatory authorities.
“Together with Heinzel's Laakirchen Papier AG, which is located less than three kilometers from the Steyrermühl paper mill, the site will become a hub for sustainable packaging papers and renewable energy with [the anticipated] closing of the transaction on January 1, 2024,” states Heinzel Group.
UPM currently operates one paper machine for newsprint production at the site, plus a sawmill and a residue incineration plant co-owned with Heinzel. UPM says it plans to continue operations as they are until the end of 2023, when it will cease the production of graphic papers in Steyrermühl.
Heinzel Group says it will use the time between signing and closing of the transaction to evaluate and, if feasible, plan and prepare a conversion of Steyrermühl’s capacity to the production of packaging papers. This evaluation will include not only the paper machine that is currently running, but also a second paper machine at the site that was idled by UPM in 2017, says the Austrian buyer.
Currently, Heinzel Group produces a range of papers for flexible packing (kraft papers) and rigid packaging (containerboard) at its sites in Pöls, Laakirchen and Raubling, Austria. On its website, the company says it uses some 975,000 metric tons per year of recovered fiber to help supply its mills.
“In Steyrermühl, we will be looking at complementing our existing products; we see great potential in the fast-growing markets for sustainable packaging papers,” says Heinzel Group CEO Sebastian Heinzel.
Additionally, Heinzel Group says it will consider developing Steyrermühl into a supply center for heat and energy for both the Laakirchen paper mill and the wider Laakirchen community. “The recent developments in Europe have shown us all how important it is to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and gas,” says Heinzel Group chief operating officer Kurt Maier.
“At our neighboring Laakirchen mill we have successfully shown that there is a future after the end of graphic paper production, and this future is based on sustainable packaging papers and green energy,” says Thomas Welt, CEO of Laakirchen Papier AG.
Heinzel Group operates paper and board production companies Zellstoff Pöls, Laakirchen Papier, Raubling Papier and Estonian Cell, and trading companies Heinzelsales, Europapier and Bunzl & Biach.
Steel and scrap company’s net earnings rose 140 percent compared with the same quarter in 2021.
Irving, Texas-based Commercial Metals Co. (CMC) says its net earnings of $312.4 million earned in the quarter ending May 31, represent a 140 percent increase compared with the $130.4 million earned in the same timeframe in 2021.
During the March 1 to May 31 period this year, which represents the third quarter of CMC’s 2022 fiscal year, the company says it garnered $483.9 million in “core earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), representing a 110 percent increase year on year.”
“Margins over scrap in North America and Europe reflect strong market conditions and favorable customer sentiment,” according to the company, which also cites “continued strength in [the] North America downstream pipeline, with record bid activity and backlog levels on both a volume and price basis” as a reason for optimism.
Barbara R. Smith, board chair, president and CEO of CMC, says, “The third quarter was another remarkable financial result for our company, underpinned by strong operational execution and robust market conditions across our key geographies. Our team produced record quarterly adjusted EBITDA that nearly matched the best annual performance in the history of CMC's Europe segment.”
Smith also praises CMC employees at its steel mill complex in Poland for humanitarian efforts made in response to Ukrainians fleeing that nation’s invasion by Russia. “CMC employees in Poland have opened their homes and communities in a heartfelt grassroots effort to assist refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine,” she remarks.
CMC, an operator of several scrap-fed electric arc furnace (EAF) steel mills, says demand for its finished steel products in North America was robust during the quarter, with several key internal and external indicators pointing toward continued strength. “Steel products have experienced five consecutive quarters of year-over-year margin expansion, while margins on raw material sales have grown for nine consecutive quarters,” states the firm.
In the March to May 2022 period, the average selling price for steel products increased by $316 per ton compared with the third quarter of fiscal 2021, while the cost of scrap used rose by $103 per ton. “The result was a year-over-year increase of $213 per ton in margin over scrap,” says CMC.
In Europe, the company faced supply constraints, but CMC writes, “As a result of continued strong demand and constrained supply in the wake of trade sanctions against Russia and Belarus, the average [steel] selling price increased by $303 per ton compared to the prior-year quarter, while the cost of scrap utilized rose $154 per ton. The result was a year-over-year increase in margin over scrap of $149 per ton.”
Looking ahead, Smith remarks, “We anticipate strong financial performance to continue in the fourth quarter. Robust demand for each of CMC’s major product lines is expected to persist, augmented by our growing downstream backlog and solid levels of new work entering the project pipeline. Margins over scrap in both North America and Europe should remain at levels near those of the third quarter, driven by favorable market conditions across our geographies.”
She adds, “The expected early calendar 2023 startup of our Arizona 2 micromill will provide CMC with a greater flexibility to capitalize on these anticipated favorable demand conditions.”
California company says it helped divert 1.3 million tons of recyclable and compostable materials from landfills last year.
San Francisco-based Recology says information gathered for its 2022 Sustainability Update includes that last year, “In partnership with industry peers, Recology collected and processed more than 1.3 million tons of recyclable and compostable materials, including more than 735,000 tons of organic materials.”
The company calculates its recycling and composting activities of Recology and its partners “avoided 1.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas equivalents in 2021, which is nine times more than the emissions generated from the company’s own operations.”
Regarding the curbside recyclables and organic material collected, Recology CEO Sal Coniglio comments, “All of that is material that’s been diverted from the landfill. By recovering recyclable materials and turning food scraps and yard trimmings into rich compost for farms, we’re helping this material achieve its highest and best use.”
Other 2021 activities highlighted in the report include that Recology has been involved in commercial-scale composting for 25 years, with Recology saying it helped pioneer that activity.
The company says last year it also engaged in “maintaining commitments to maximize resource recovery and address climate change through the expanded use of renewable fuels, carbon-free electricity and more.”
Recology says it continues to expand its organics processing services. In California, the company says it is helping communities meet the organic waste recovery targets and other requirements of SB 1383, the statewide law requiring all municipalities to reduce landfilling of compostable materials by 75 percent by 2025.
“We continue to push the boundaries of resource recovery, investing millions in our composting facilities in Oregon and California and positioning ourselves to help jurisdictions meet the requirements of progressive organics recovery legislation,” says Coniglio.
The report also indicates Recology powered nearly 83 percent of its collection fleet with renewable or alternative fuels in 2021, an improvement from 80 percent in 2020. “This achievement is owed to a company-wide transition to more sustainable fuels including renewable diesel (R99) and renewable natural gas,” the firm says.
“When I look at 2022 and beyond, I see opportunity,” Coniglio says. Among those, he lists an “opportunity to further invest in resource recovery, to keep materials out of landfills and to support the circular economy.”
The RightCycle Program will accept flex-film plastic packaging from Kimtech and KleenGuard products.
Kimberly-Clark Professional, a Roswell, Georgia-based company offering contamination control solutions for cleanrooms and laboratories, has expanded The RightCycle Program, the first large recycling effort for nonhazardous lab, cleanroom and industrial personal protective equipment (PPE) waste. Flex-film plastic packaging from Kimtech and KleenGuard products will now be accepted for recycling through the program.
“This is a significant step in addressing a challenging waste stream that currently has very low recycling rates compared with other commodities, such as paper and cardboard,” says Mike Haley, vice president of PPE at Kimberly-Clark Professional. “As the program continues to grow and evolve, we remain committed to finding ways to expand our recycling capabilities in order to help our customers reach their goals and to deliver on our purpose of better care for a better world.”
Since 2011, RightCycle has empowered more than 900 customers to divert 3.7 million pounds of waste, the company says.
Film and flexible packaging are composed of various substances, and recycling them requires a specific approach. In 2019, only 5 percent of managed plastic waste in the United States was recycled, according to scientists with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. RightCycle has established partnerships and processes to properly recycle these items.
In addition to plastic packaging waste, RightCycle collects previously hard-to-recycle PPE, such as garments, masks, gloves and goggles. These items are then recycled by regional partners that create new plastic pellets, which are used to produce consumer products and durable goods, including flowerpots and lawn furniture, benches and bicycle racks.
Originating in the United States with a few scientific manufacturing customers, RightCycle is now available in nine countries across Europe and North America with a wide range of customers that include universities, zoos, laboratories, manufacturing facilities, breweries and a variety of other businesses.
RightCycle contributes to Kimberly-Clark’s global 2030 ambition, which is to improve the lives of 1 billion people in underserved communities around the globe with the smallest environmental footprint. Kimberly-Clark says it understands that a strong and enduring focus on safeguarding natural systems is just as essential to helping people live a better life. To that end, the company is focused on the areas where it can make the biggest difference – climate, forests, water and plastics.
Irving, Texas-based Kimberly-Clark aspires to be at the forefront of the transition to a circular, reuse economy by reducing waste, promoting waste-handling system improvements and innovating new ways of providing people with the products that they need to live their best lives, the company says. In 2021, it expanded RightCycle in Europe to other categories to include the recycling of plastic dispensers and hand towels. According to Kimberly-Clark, this will provide the company with an even greater opportunity to reduce its environmental footprint in collaboration with its customers.
The initiative includes a research project to study the use of depolymerization for feedstock production.
Fluence Analytics, a venture capital-backed company based in Stafford, Texas, that is experienced in continuous polymer and biopharma analytics and process optimization, has announced a circular economy initiative anchored by a phased depolymerization research project. The new project starts with a technology and market assessment of the circular economy, specifically focused on the conversion of postuse plastic into reusable raw materials. Fluence Analytics has partnered with its academic research partner, Tulane University’s Energy Institute, and one of its investors and customers, Diamond Edge Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corp., on the project.
The study already has provided insights into the circular economy, including a comprehensive view of available technologies in the sector, the company says. Using these insights, Fluence Analytics has developed a road map for subsequent phases of activity targeting implementation of analytics and control solutions to enable economic scale-up of new depolymerization technologies. The next phase of the project is a technical proof of concept. The breakdown of plastic materials into feedstocks that are then used to create new products is one of many proposed solutions toward a more sustainable future. Over time, the company says, this will reduce the volume of plastic pollution in Earth’s environment.
“When we were still incubating on Tulane’s campus, we always envisioned enabling more sustainable production of polymer materials. ACOMP, our real-time polymer analytics solution that improves operational efficiency, has already contributed toward that objective, but the possibility of directly participating in the circular economy via new depolymerization technologies is a completely new dimension for us,” says Alex Reed, co-founder, president and CCO of Fluence Analytics. “We now have a chance to work with the industry to fully close the loop, both in process control and renewable feedstocks, across polymer production, which is a driving force in our company’s mission.”
An example of depolymerization is the conversion of polyethylene back to ethylene. According to Fluence Analytics, the advantage of going back to the chemical building block is the ability to leverage existing assets to polymerize the monomers back into polymer with the properties of newly created material. Mechanical recycling, while very useful for a range of applications, has several challenges due to additives and altered properties of reprocessed material, the company says.