Steelmaker to install $200 million gas supply system at its scrap-fed mill in Huger, South Carolina.

Nucor Corp., based in Charlotte, North Carolina, says it will invest $200 million over the next five years in what it calls mill modernization projects at its scrap-fed electric arc furnace Nucor Steel Berkeley (EAF) steel mill in Huger, South Carolina.

A portion of the capital investment will include the construction of a new air separation unit (ASU) to supply industrial gases for the mill's steelmaking operations, Nucor says.

When complete, the ASU will be operated by UIG LLC, a Nucor subsidiary that focuses on industrial gas supply. Nucor Steel Berkeley currently is supplied with industrial gases under a long-term supply agreement. The anticipated project will allow Nucor, through UIG, to produce and supply all the gases needed for the mill from the new Nucor-owned facility “now and into the future,” the steel producer says.

"Nucor acquired UIG in 2019 so that we would have the capability to build and operate our own air separation units, giving us an alternative to long-term service contracts with outside providers,” says Mike Lee, vice president at Nucor Steel Berkeley. “We are proud of our company’s long-time partnership with the State of South Carolina, and we are excited to continue to invest in the state where Nucor first began operating nearly 60 years ago.”

The State of South Carolina provided the ASU project with a grant issued by its Department of Commerce Coordinating Council for Economic Development, as well as a grant from the state’s utility provider, Santee Cooper. Nucor and Berkeley County, South Carolina, also entered into a fee-in-lieu of tax agreement.

Nucor Steel Berkeley, which has about 1,000 employees, produces up to 3.5 million tons of flat-rolled sheet and structural steel per year used by companies in the agriculture, automotive and appliance, construction, energy, oil and gas, heavy equipment, infrastructure and transportation sectors.

Auction firm says "late-model rolling stock and waste hauling equipment" on offer at Ohio and Pennsylvania sites.

Tiger Group, a California-based auctioneer, is overseeing the Sept. 8 liquidation of equipment that had been used by Buckeye Water Services, a former fracking services and waste hauling company with locations in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The auctioneer says the sale features tractor trucks, dump trucks, vacuum trucks and trailers, as well as construction equipment and more than 100 roll-off boxes for commercial waste hauling.

Tiger Group says, “The liquidation is noteworthy for its well-maintained, late-model rolling stock. Construction equipment and more than 100 20- and 30-yard roll-off boxes for waste removal are also available.”

Bidding for the online auction opens Thursday, Sept. 1, at 10:30 a.m. and closes Thursday, Sept. 8, at 10:30 a.m.

“In addition to specialized rolling stock and construction equipment, former Buckeye assets of more general utility, such as pickups, winch and service trucks, SUVs, a Caterpillar skid steer and a lowboy trailer by Entyre, are also available,” says Chad Farrell, managing director at Tiger.

The Ohio location in New Concord is near Columbus while the Hickory, Pennsylvania, site is near Pittsburgh. Buckeye Water Services had provided specialized services to the oil and gas industry for more than 50 years and had what Tiger calls “substantial waste hauling operations.”

Trucks and trucking equipment on offer include some from Mack, Peterbilt and Kenworth with model years ranging from 2018 to 2022. Several pickup trucks and a GMC service truck also are being auctioned, as well as roll-off trailers made by Michigan-based Benlee.

According to Tiger, “The assets can be inspected by appointment on Wednesday, Sept. 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Hickory and New Concord locations.”

Photos of the equipment can be found here, and inquiries can be sent to auctions@tigergroup.com or made by phone at (805) 497-4999.

SungEel Recycling Park, a subsidiary of SungEel HiTech, will invest more than $37 million in the new facility and create 104 jobs in Stephens County.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has announced lithium-ion battery recycler and raw materials provider SungEel Recycling Park Georgia LLC will locate its first U.S. recycling facility in Georgia. The company is a subsidiary of the Korea-based global industry leader SungEel HiTech Co. Ltd.  

According to a news release from Kemp’s office, the company will invest more than $37 million in the new facility and create 104 jobs in Stephens County.  

"Georgia recently announced record-breaking numbers for the fiscal year 2022, and companies like SungEel are evidence that the rapidly growing electric mobility ecosystem continues to generate new jobs for hardworking Georgians across the state," Kemp says. "Korea has been a key partner in Georgia’s growing sustainable technology industry, and I’m excited that SungEel chose the Peach State for their first U.S. facility."  

With more than 10 years of patented technology, SungEel says it specializes in recycling technology using a 100 percent fully circular system. This process, which recycles end-of-life batteries and battery manufacturing scrap, has a metal recovery rate of more than 95 percent. Recovered metals include nickel, cobalt and lithium.  

"SungEel HiTech's entry into Georgia is the last piece of the puzzle to build a sustainable ecosystem of Georgia’s electric vehicle supply chain," says Suk Jae Yim, representative of SungEel Recycling Park Georgia. "SungEel Recycling Park Georgia will conduct its full responsibility to build a U.S. eco-friendly industrial ecosystem in line with the expectations of the state of Georgia and Stephens County."  

SungEel Recycling Park Georgia’s new facility will be at the Hayestone Brady Business Park, a Georgia Ready for Accelerated Development- (GRAD-) certified site in Toccoa. The GRAD program is a proactive effort by Georgia’s economic development community to develop a portfolio of available sites ready for fast-track development. Operations are expected to begin in early 2024. Over the next few years, the company will be hiring technicians, operators, administrative and sales roles.   

Director of Korean Investment Yoonie Kim represented the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) on this competitive project in partnership with the Stephens County Development Authority and Georgia Electric Membership Corp.  

"SungEel is a company at the cutting edge of sustainable technology, and we believe SungEel’s proximity to other members of Georgia’s electric mobility ecosystem will lead to amazing success," says GDEcD Commissioner Pat Wilson. "Creating the jobs of the future and protecting the opportunities of today means preparing key industries, such as the auto industry, for the next technological revolution."  

Kemp’s office says Georgia’s prime location, extensive infrastructure, skilled workforce and business-friendly climate has made it an attractive location for various rapidly developing industries focused on creating a sustainable future. Georgia is cultivating a vertically integrated supply chain that will help companies increase efficiencies by reducing the reliance on imported materials. Electric vehicle-related projects have contributed more than $13 billion in investments and more than 18,100 new jobs to Georgia since 2020.  

SungEel's announcement follows an earlier announcement from Igneo, a White Plains, New York-based electronics recycling company that produces high-grade copper concentrate from discarded low-grade consumer electronics, that is building a secondary smelter in Savannah, Georgia, that will process 90,000 metric tons annually once it is online in early 2024. The smelter will be fed with material from evTerra, the company's electronics recycling subsidiary. 

Recycling Today has reached out to SunEel for additional details about its facility. 

Yasi Alemzadeh will oversee product management and professional services, and Brent Glover will oversee engineering and system administration.

Routeware Inc., a provider of fully integrated technology solutions for waste and recycling based in Portland, Oregon, has announced a new executive leadership team. Joining Routeware leadership is Yasi Alemzadeh as chief customer officer and Brent Glover as chief technology officer.   

The company says Alemzadeh brings an extensive background in the industry, having developed and scaled customer-facing teams for global technology companies. She now leads Routeware customer-facing groups, including product management, customer success and professional services.   

With experience leading large, global engineering teams for growing, enterprise software as a service organization, Glover now oversees Routeware technology, including engineering and IT.

Routeware has also announced its inaugural User Conference, Oct. 11-14 in Portland, Oregon.  

“Routeware, which serves more than 100 million people each day, is the only provider of seamlessly integrated technology for the waste and recycling industry,” says Tom Malone, CEO of Routeware. “We are now poised to add even greater value to municipalities and private haulers and the clients they serve, with unmatched, end-to-end innovation and customer experience. Our next-generation vision will be shared at our User Conference, marking the first-time users of all our solutions unite under one roof to share ideas and best practices.”  

Customers of all Routeware solutions are invited to the 2022 Routeware User Conference, Oct. 11-14, Portland, Oregon. The event will include best practices training, technology roadmaps and the opportunity to network with other peers about fleet automation, workflow solutions, route optimization, and customer engagement. Registration is open on the Routeware website. 

Data show an increase to 52.2 percent of paper and board made from recycled content worldwide in 2020, but U.S. recovered paper production and exports declined.

The Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) recently released its “Paper and Board Recycling in 2020: Overview of world statistics” report, noting that 2020 was “a year that will live long in the global memory for one specific reason: the COVID[-19] pandemic.” But the report indicates cause for optimism when it comes to the role of recovered paper in paper and board production, revealing that more than half of all paper and board produced globally contained recycled content.

According to the study, BIR Paper Division officials conclude 52.2 percent of the world’s paper and board contained recovered fiber, an increase from 51.2 percent in 2019 and 50.3 percent in 2018.

Asia accounted for 43.8 percent of global recovered paper production, ahead of Europe at 27 percent and the United States and Canada at just under 20 percent. The report shows global production of recovered fiber fell from nearly 244 million metric tons in 2019 to just below 240 million metric tons in 2020.

“It should be remembered that global paper and board production was already on a downtrend even before the pandemic emerged,” BIR Paper Division President Francisco Donoso says in the report. “The growth seen in the packaging and tissue segments was being more than outweighed by the inexorable decline in demand for newsprint and writing.”

He adds, “The one message standing out above all others is that, even during a global pandemic, the recovered paper industry continued to play its essential role in supplying the world paper and board industry with specification raw material.”

Global paper and board production fell approximately 14 million metric tons in 2020 to fewer than 399 million metric tons total, and the report shows the U.S./Canada and Oceania regions with the steepest year-on-year decline, down 4.4 percent to 46.6 million metric tons and 6 percent to 3.1 million metric tons, respectively.

The U.S. saw a steep decline in exports to several countries, including to China, which decreased 16.6 percent to 4.5 million metric tons in 2020. U.S. recovered paper exports to other destinations also decreased:

U.S. recovered paper exports increased to several countries, however:

The report concludes, “Data contained in this third edition illustrate the importance of recovered [fiber] in the production of paper and board around the world, particularly in the growing packaging segment,” with the BIR adding that the significance in the global production mix intensified in 2020 with the proportion of recovered paper used in packaging increasing from 86 percent in 2019 to 87 percent in 2020.

“The paper recycling industry enshrines the principles of a circular economy given that we are clearly heading in the direction of a world in which recycling content will become an ever-increasing component of the final paper and board product mix,” the study says. “To ensure that recovered [fiber] achieves its full consumption potential, international free trade in this vital raw material must be safeguarded.”