European board producer selects equipment for its paper machine conversion project.

Finland-based Valmet Oyj says it has been selected by France-based VPK to equip a paper machine grade conversion rebuild at VPK’s Alizay mill in France. Startup of the rebuilt line has been scheduled for the end of 2022.

The project, announced in October, calls for a paper machine that currently produces fine paper grades to be rebuilt to produce recycled-content lightweight containerboard grades. VPK says the project supports its plans “for long-term sustainable development in circular economy.

“We have excellent relations with VPK Group from earlier projects, for example Blue Paper's grade conversion rebuild in France,” says Markus Laitila, director of large projects at Valmet. “I felt we were able to adapt well to the customer’s needs in this project as well: as the machine in question is familiar to us, we were able to offer proven and reliable technical solutions that fulfilled the requirements cost-efficiently.”

Valmet’s grade conversion delivery will include a flow system, modifications to the headbox, a shoe and blade technology upgrade in the forming section and a new OptiPress Center press section to improve drying and runnability, says the technology provider.

The drying section will be updated and the delivery also will include “an extensive air systems upgrade [and] improvements in the automation system, including machine control systems, sectional drive control systems, quality management systems, process control systems and a paper machine clothing package,” says Valmet.

The board machine will produce fluting and testliner grades at up to 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) per minute with an annual capacity of 450,000 metric tons.

Belgium-based VPK Group acquired the Alizay mill in Normandy, France, from the Double A company in June of this year. VPK Group produces recycled-content paper, corrugated cardboard packaging, solid board packaging and cores. The company has three paper mills, nine corrugated box plants and one core winding plant in France.

The company says its molecular recycling technologies create the potential for more than $450 million of adjusted EBITDA by 2026.

During its 2021 Innovation Day, which was hosted in-person and virtually Dec. 7, Eastman Chemical Co.’s executive management team highlighted key elements of the company's business strategies and detailed its pathway to deliver growth through 2024, which includes the company’s molecular, or chemical, recycling technologies.

"Over the past several years, we have executed a strategy to position Eastman as a leading material innovation company,” Mark Costa, Eastman board chair and chief executive officer, said. “Central to our strategy is our compelling, innovation-driven growth model, which is succeeding in creating consistent, sustainable value for all our stakeholders. We are leveraging our unique model to create value from disruptive macro trends, which we expect to be a strong contributor to Eastman's growth over the next three years."

Costa said the company is excited about the leadership position it has in the circular economy. “Through our competitively advantaged molecular recycling capabilities, we are providing solutions for the plastic waste and climate crises while also creating a new vector of growth that has the potential to deliver greater than $450 million of adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) by 2026."

Eastman says it is expecting an adjusted earnings per share compounded annual growth rate of 8 to 12 percent over the next three years; an increase in corporate adjusted EBITDA margin to approximately 23 percent; more than $1.6 billion of annual operating cash flow; and return on invested capital to be between 12 to 15 percent, which is significantly above cost of capital.

Costa said environmental, social and governance (ESG) are integrated into the company's growth plans and detailed the company's path to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This includes increased energy efficiency, process transformation, focus on renewable energy and leveraging technology breakthroughs.   

Steve Crawford, executive vice president, technology and chief sustainability officer, said, "The triple challenge created by the climate, plastic waste and growing population crises has intensified the need for sustainable innovations. To address these issues, we have aligned our top innovation platforms with these significant sustainability drivers.”

He said the company is on track for new business revenue from innovation that will approach $700 million in 2024, noting that depolymerization and intermediate purification are competitive advantages for Eastman. Crawford also detailed the sustainable and competitive advantages to Eastman's molecular recycling technologies, including a lower carbon footprint, the ability to recycle hard-to-recycle material, no compromise in performance and security of supply.

He said both mechanical and molecular recycling will be needed to eliminate waste and create a truly circular economy, with mechanical recycling offering the most carbon efficiency when possible.

Brad Lich, Eastman’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, detailed the company’s business strategies to build on the performance of the Advanced Materials segment, which consists of specialty plastics, advanced interlayers and performance films product lines.

"Advanced Materials is a great specialty business that is well-positioned to accelerate its strong track record of growth as global sustainability macro trends gain momentum," he said. "In response to the global plastic waste and climate crises, customers and brands are looking to increase materials with recycled content. Through our circular recycling technologies, we are uniquely positioned to take materials that were otherwise bound for the landfill and deliver high-quality products without compromising quality or performance."

At the start of this year, Eastman said it was moving forward with its circular economy project in Kingsport, Tennessee, which includes building the world's largest polyester material recycling facility and a Tritan polyester polymerization plant. This facility will contribute to Eastman achieving its sustainability commitments for addressing the plastic waste crisis, which includes recycling more than 500 million pounds of plastic waste annually by 2030 via molecular recycling technologies and becoming carbon neutral by 2050, according to the company. Eastman says it has committed to recycling more than 250 million pounds of plastic annually by 2025.

The Kingsport project is expected to begin producing at commercial quantities in 2023. In addition, Lich said the company is in active discussions for additional projects in Europe and the U.S. and expects to announce at least one additional circular economy project in the first half of 2022.

Lucian Boldea, executive vice president, Additives & Functional Products and Chemical Intermediates, discussed actions taken in the Additives & Functional Products segment over the past year that have resulted in a more focused and resilient portfolio. These actions include the divestiture of nonstrategic businesses with approximately $1.1 billion of revenue expected to be completed in first quarter 2022. The focused, more streamlined segment now consists of coatings additives, care additives, animal nutrition and specialty fluids businesses.

He also discussed the role the Chemical Intermediates segment plays in supporting specialty growth through scale and integration, feedstocks for circular recycling facilities and its contribution to Eastman's strong cash flow generation.

Eastman’s total capital expenditures on the project are roughly $425 million and its projected return on invested capital is 15 percent, Costa confirms in an interview with Recycling Today following the event. Costa says the methanolysis plant in Kingsport is on track for completion at the end of 2022 and that the company has committed to additional production of polyester polymers with recycled content. 

Eastman has pulled forward its Tritan expansion with a new 80,000 metric ton per year line in Kingsport that will be fed in part by its methanolysis facility, which will be able to process 110,000 metric tons of postuse plastics annually, including hard-to-recycle polyethylene terephthalate (PET), carpet and textiles that cannot be mechanically recycled. The company will produce 150,000 to 200,000 metric tons of its Tritan Renew polymer with recycled content annually, he adds.

Tritan Renew does sell at a “small” premium relative to the company’s legacy Tritan product, he adds. Costa says Eastman is seeing “tremendous interest” in its circular products across many industries, including cosmetics and tools. Black & Decker is a new customer that is using Tritan Renew in its Reviva line of power tools, marking the world’s first power tools made from recycled material. The line, which will launch in early 2022, will be made using Tritan Renew with 50 percent certified recycled content.

“It is really important for the industry to prove there is a circular life for plastics,” Costa says, adding that Eastman’s molecular recycling technology is scalable and economical and lowers the company’s carbon footprint. “It is the right answer for the climate combined with addressing the plastic waste crisis.”

He says the company is working with some of the world’s largest waste and recycling companies to source material for its methanolysis plant. According to the company’s Innovation Day presentation, it is in discussions with more than 125 potential suppliers. “We are not competing for material that can be mechanically recycled,” he says. “We want what is going to landfill or incineration.” He adds that the company pays for this feedstock, which companies otherwise would have to pay to dispose of.  

Eastman has secured about half of the feedstock needed for its Kingsport facility, Costa says, acknowledging that securing offtake agreements for its recycled-content products has been easier than securing feedstock.

Maryland scrap processing firm’s holdings include an auto shredder.

The Sims Metal business unit of Australia-based Sims Ltd. has purchased Maryland-based Atlantic Recycling Group (ARG), including the firm’s auto shredding plant in Baltimore.

Atlantic Recycling Group has two locations in Baltimore operating under the United Iron & Metal name, including the shredder yard, and operates a location under the Montgomery Scrap name in Rockville, Maryland.

The company’s co-founder Robert Millstone died this September, after having spent more than four decades in the scrap industry. Contacted by Recycling Today, remaining ARG principal David Caffee says under terms of the sale, he will stay with ARG for two years.

According to Sims, ARG processes and sells approximately 150,000 metric tons of ferrous and nonferrous scrap annually.

Sims says ARG is being acquired “for a total consideration of $37 million plus working capital adjustments,” with the acquisition expected to be finalized Jan. 1, 2022. “The acquisition price implies an enterprise value/EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) multiple of 4.2 on a pre-synergies basis,” adds Sims.

In its news release announcing the acquisition, Sims states, “The transaction provides operational and commercial synergies and is consistent with the company’s strategy to grow in large coastal markets which offer the potential for top tier processing facilities and bulk export optionality.”

The ARG acquisition helps Sims expand its East Coast operational footprint, with it now stretching from South Carolina to New England, “an area incorporating many of the largest markets for secondary metal generation in the U.S.A,” states Sims.

“I welcome the team at Atlantic Recycling into the Sims Limited family,” says Alistair Field, CEO and managing director of Sims Ltd. “This acquisition provides Sims Metal with entry into a complementary market and strengthens the already solid East Coast footprint in North America.”

The association says technical and legal analysis demonstrates advanced recycling is not waste incineration.

Dec. 16, America’s plastic makers submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding its advanced notice of proposed rulemaking on gasification and pyrolysis, also known as advanced recycling.

Regulating these technologies as incineration would contradict the very definition and established EPA interpretations of “incineration” and hinder progress toward increasing plastics recycling and achieving a circular economy, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), Washington, says.

“Advanced recycling is critical to realizing sustainability and recycling goals, including the EPA’s goal of recycling 50 percent of postuse materials by 2030 and America’s plastic makers’ goal of reusing, recycling or recovering all U.S. plastic packaging by 2040,” says Joshua Baca, ACC vice president of plastics. “EPA’s National Recycling Strategy, released last month, recognizes the potential of advanced recycling technologies to transform plastic recycling rates in the U.S. Regulating these technologies as solid waste incineration would be a step backwards.”

Businesses are using advanced recycling to create innovative new products made with recycled plastics, and incorrectly regulating advanced recycling as solid waste incineration would stifle similar innovations in sustainability, the ACC says.

Many states are regulating these facilities as manufacturing sites, and 14 states have reinforced this by enacting laws that ensure advanced recycling is regulated as a manufacturing process as opposed to solid waste disposal or incineration since 2017. More than $7.5 billion in advanced recycling projects have been announced or are operating in the United States, with the potential to divert 11.7 billion pounds of waste from landfills, the ACC says. Regulating advanced recycling as solid waste incineration would hinder these investments and create significant uncertainty in the market.

The ACC notes that advanced recycling facilities do not dispose of or incinerate the used plastics they receive. Rather, they convert them in the absence of oxygen into raw materials for new products, including virgin-quality plastics for food- and pharma-contact applications. 

The manganese, cobalt and nickel solvent extraction technology will be used at Li-Cycle’s battery recycling plant in Rochester, New York.

Metso Outotec, headquartered in Helsinki, says it has signed an agreement with Li-Cycle North America Hub Inc. for the supply of manganese, cobalt and nickel solvent extraction technology to be used at its battery recycling plant that is being constructed in Rochester, New York. The contract value was not disclosed.

The Metso Outotec delivery includes three modular VSFX solvent extraction plants and related Dual Media filters as well as basic engineering.

Jari Ålgars, president of the Metals business area at Metso Outotec, says, “The energy-efficient, modular VSFX solvent extraction plant, which is part of our Planet Positive product range, reduces emissions and is safe to operate. The Li-Cycle project will be an important new reference for Metso Outotec in the battery recycling business.”

Li-Cycle, which is headquartered in Toronto, has developed a hub-and-spoke model for lithium-ion battery recycling. Ajay Kochhar, the company’s co-founder, president and CEO, has said that Li-Cycle’s hub-and-spoke model solves the logistics problem associated with lithium-ion batteries by decentralizing the mechanical processing of the batteries near generators, namely battery manufacturers and areas with high concentrations of EV use. The company also is working with aggregators of end-of-life electronics. Its spokes produce black mass—a mixture of lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel—as well as a mixed aluminum and copper product and plastics. This material is then further processed at hub locations, with the first commercial-scale facility in Rochester.

Li-Cycle recently announced it will expand the input processing capacity of its Rochester hub by more than 40 percent to 35,000 metric tons of black mass annually, which is equivalent to nearly 90,000 metric tons of lithium-ion batteries. Li-Cycle also says the increased capacity will allow the facility to process battery material that is the equivalent of about 225,000 electric vehicles (EVs) per year.