Among the wounded

Auto shredding plant operators have invested continually to extract every piece of metal that passes through the shredder before it inadvertently travels off the property along with the residue stream.

a high percentage of what is fed to shredding plants, but the inclusion of induction sensors and sorters has allowed plant operators to more effectively harvest what there is.

The postshredder and postinduction-sorted mixed metals grade was given the name “zurik” by the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) in 2007, and the creation and trading of zurik subsequently has been established. An established market is not always a healthy one, however. In late 2015 and early 2016, the low output of shredding plants has reduced the volume of zurik, and ongoing slack demand for stainless steel scrap in China has tempered demand for the grade.

MISSING IN ACTION

Shredding plant operators get their feedstock from many sources, some of which are price sensitive. When ferrous scrap prices plunged in the fall of 2015, less scrap showed up in scrap yards of all types, including shredder yards.

The overall tight scrap supply situation has been one factor in the fate of zurik in the first half of 2016, but recyclers and traders say other factors are causing zurik to be in short supply.

As the managing director of nonferrous for Scrap Metal Services (SMS), Burnham, Illinois, Michael Nedvidek helps operate a media plant in northern Illinois that accepts shredded mixed metals for additional processing.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, Nedvidek says, “Shredder feed volumes had dropped to such a degree that a lot of our customer base (shredders who sell us their zorba for processing at our heavy media plant) had reduced their labor force and limited what equipment they were operating in their downstream systems.”

It is unclear whether plant operators benefit in any way from switching off their induction sorting equipment, says Randy Goodman of Greenland (America) Inc., based in the Atlanta area. “I don’t think [idling sensor sorters] is practical in most downstream systems,” he comments. “The sensor sorters are part of the downstream systems and usually can’t be bypassed. They really wouldn’t want to bypass them anyway, because they are not going to throw away all the metals that the systems generate.”

Recyclers and traders say zurik was notably absent in the market in late 2015, and it coincided with a time when stainless steel scrap prices were especially low.

Mark Hadacek, director of nonferrous marketing for St. Louis-based Alter Trading, says, “Many of the downstream processing systems do not make a clean zurik product with one or even two passes. With the value of zurik so low, the law of diminishing returns comes into play, and many can’t justify running the material a second or third time to produce a zurik product clean enough to export.”

Reduced labor forces at some shredder yards “in conjunction with low domestic stainless steel prices and low export zurik prices caused a lot of folks to put that [zurik] scrap in their zorba,” Nedvidek says.

Goodman’s perspective as a trader led him to the same conclusion. “I have heard from one heavy media operator that the amount of stainless steel in some suppliers’ zorba had gone from 1 percent up to around 10 percent,” Goodman says. “The only explanation [is] that the stainless steel fraction sorted out by the sensor sorters was dumped back into the zorba. This tends to happen when the value of 18/8 stainless steel is less than the value of zorba.”

Andy Wahl of Atlanta-based TAV Holdings Inc. points to the same conclusion, saying, “Most operators who make zurik have tried to blend it with their zorba because of the weak stainless price.”

In early April, ferrous scrap prices rebounded enough to help flows into shredder yards for the first time in several months. Later in April, stainless scrap prices rebounded, boosted by the healthy order books of U.S. stainless mills. The combination of factors should help keep the zurik from being commingled with zorba.

“So far, in 2016 with the scrap volumes having increased, many shredders have added some labor back to their operations and are now operating their total downstream systems,” Nedvidek says as of early May. “Add that to the improved domestic stainless steel prices and zurik markets, and we are now seeing very little zurik in the zorba.”

Healthier global demand for stainless steel scrap can make the effort to isolate it from the mixed shredded stream more worthwhile. Even though zurik is a tradeable, shipped grade, it is not yet ready to see the inside of a furnace until after some “hands on” work is completed.

CONSIDERABLE EFFORT

The automation induction sorting units exemplify is part of the ongoing drive by scrap recyclers to prepare metal for consumers without the need to hire large numbers of people.

When it comes to successfully isolating pure stainless steel from shredder feedstock, however, recyclers say some level of hand sorting remains necessary.

“Hand sorting is still necessary to produce a grade that can be melted,” Nedvidek says. “There have been technological advances in sorting equipment, but the economics still favor hand sorting (in conjunction with equipment sorting).”

Says Wahl, “Some [producers of zurik] have to hand-pick it for circuit boards in order to pass the CCIC (China Certification and Inspection Group) inspection if they are selling it as zurik.”

CCIC is the inspection agency for scrap shipments to China.

Don Suderman of Bunting Magnetics Co., Newton, Kansas, says his customers continue to pursue new angles in the quest to go as far with automation as they can. Suderman says “the recovery of smaller 2-inch-minus pieces of stainless steel from the [residue] stream is one such application.” He lists “the purification of the stainless steel that has been separated out by other types of induction sorting to gain a higher stainless steel purity [and] the removal of stainless steel from the wire fraction to both recover the stainless steel and to provide a cleaner sellable wire fraction” as other applications.

Goodman remarks, “There are multiple systems on the market that purport to make a clean stainless steel package mechanically. I would say that these machines have seen vast improvements over the past couple of years, but I would also say that most facilities still have to do a little bit of sorting to pull out any errors before the material could go into a melt.”

Not all shredding plant owners invest in downstream systems the same way. “Not everybody has sensor sorters and [some operators] have been hesitant to invest in buying them due to low stainless prices,” Wahl says.

In Asia, “It is my understanding that most of the buyers [there] are still hand sorting zurik to separate it into its various components,” says Hadacek. “Many of the Asian processors have invested in automation for separation of zorba, but I have not heard of any investment in equipment [in Asia] to mechanically sort zurik.”

As of early May, recyclers say zurik was trading in the “low 30s” (31 to 33 cents per pound), indicating a price range that may not inspire additional sorting efforts.

Sources contacted by Recycling Today see India as an emerging player on the zurik stage. “India seems to be a good market for zurik currently,” Wahl says.

“The material is mostly being exported to India at this time,” Goodman says. “China does not have a strong market for stainless steel right now.”

If nothing else, zurik is a case study in the global nature of the recycling industry, with buyers on one side of the planet affecting the way shredder operators run their facilities on the other side of the world.

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at btaylor@gie.net.