Corporate News

CSX TRANSPORTATION INVESTS IN GONDOLAS

CSX Transportation, Jacksonville, Fla., has recently invested more than $83 million to create what it says is the largest fleet of gondola rail cars in North America. And to help scrap dealers and processors obtain those gondolas, the company is making available members of its Industrial Development Department to assist with CSX site selection information and project planning assistance. For more information, call Steve Davis at (800) 358-9242 for an appointment.

RUSSIAN SCRAP METAL TECHNIQUE TESTED

A new scrap metal processing technique that grounds non-ferrous scrap into high-grade metallurgical powders will soon be tested by Rustec Inc., Camden, N.J., in cooperation with Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Association of Centers for Engineering and Automation, St. Petersburg, Russia. According to Rustic, the powders will have a wide variety of use in industrial applications that require high-purity, high-integrity, single-size powder.

Rustic is a member of the United States Industry Coalition, a group of 78 companies working under an arrangement between the U.S. Dept. of Energy and with policy oversight from the U.S. Dept. of State to promote technology exchanges with former communist countries.

WELLMAN TO EXPAND PET RESIN BUSINESS

Wellman Inc., Shrewsbury, N.J., has announced that it will expand its PET packaging resin and polyester fiber business. The expansion plan includes construction of a production facility in the U.S., as well as plans to expand PET resin capacity in Europe. The company indicated that the European PET resin market is expected to grow by 12 percent to 14 percent in the next few years. Part of the expansion involves the acquisition of Akzo Nobel’s packaging resin business located in Emmen, the Netherlands.

"These expansions represent a part of Wellman’s corporate strategy, which calls for more than doubling the company’s combined PET resin and polyester fiber capacity by the year 2000," says Tom Duff, Wellman’s president and CEO. The company’s U.S. plant, at a site yet to be determined, will be capable of producing 600 million pounds of polyester fiber and PET resin annually. The company’s recently acquired plant in the Netherlands is expected to reach 500 million pounds of PET by the end of the century.

PORT TOWNSEND PAPER TO EXPAND

Port Townsend Paper Co., Port Townsend, Wash., has announced plans for a $27 million pulp facility that will recycle old corrugated containers. Construction of the recycling plant will begin this summer, and it is expected to be completed by mid-1996.

"The future of our industry is in recycled products," says Ted Swain, company president. "Recycling is environmentally sound and the market will increasingly demand it. Wood chips are diminishing, and we now have the technology to make quality products out of secondary fiber."

The new plant is expected to produce 300 tons per day of pulp, or about half of Port Townsend Paper’s output of 600 tons per day. The recycled pulp will be blended with virgin fiber pulp to produce paper and market pulp.

The majority of old corrugated containers that will feed the plant is expected to come from the Midwest and West, according to the company.

BIRMINGHAM STEEL HAS NEW BUSINESS UNIT

Birmingham Steel Corp., Birmingham, Ala., has formed a new business unit called Steel Services that will be responsible for the firm’s planned melt shop. The new unit will support the company’s American Steel & Wire and Kankakee minimill operations, supply chain management, utilities contracts, transportation, and Birmingham’s potential entry into HBI/DRI manufacturing. H. Avery Hilton, Jr. will serve as president of the new unit.

KINGSBURSKY TO ACQUIRE TOXCO

Kinsbursky Brothers Inc., Anaheim, Calif., has signed a letter of intent to acquire Toxco, a lithium battery recycler based in Trail, British Columbia. Toxco specializes in the recycling of lithium salts recovered from batteries by using a patented cryogenic process. Toxco is also listed as a subcontractor to many environmental companies and the United States military. Anyone with questions on lithium battery recycling can call Kinsbursky at (714) 738-8516.

WASTE TECHNOLOGY FORMS NEW SUBSIDIARY

Waste Technology Corp., Jacksonville, Fla., has announced the formation of a new subsidiary to facilitate the company’s expansion into new product lines. The subsidiary, International Press and Shear Corp., will be located in Baxley, Ga., in a new 60,000-square-foot building. It will produce high-speed balers, two-ram presses, and scrap-metal shears – equipment that Waste Tech has not been able to add because of space limitations at its existing plant in Jacksonville.

Waste Tech anticipates that the new plant will be operational by September.

IMCO PLANNING ALUMAR BUYOUT

IMCO Recycling, Irving, Texas, has signed a letter of intent to purchase all outstanding shares of Alumar Associates, Chicago Heights, Ill. Alumar owns Metal Mark Inc., which operates aluminum recycling plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Missouri. Alumar also owns 50 percent of Marport Smelting Inc., an operator of an aluminum recycling plant in Indiana. IMCO’s total purchase price is estimated to be about $10 million.

The facilities that IMCO plans to acquire have a total annual capacity of 240 million pounds of aluminum. When added to IMCO’s current capacity, the company’s total annual capacity will reach 1.4 billion pounds, or 41 percent above the 1994 total.

NEW ALUMINUM CAN RECYCLING OPERATION

Alcan Rolled Products Company has begun operation of its new $23 million aluminum can recycling operation at the site of is sheet rolling complex in Oswego, N.Y. The new 70,000-square-foot facility has the capacity to recycle more than 5 billion used beverage cans per year. "This new facility affirms Alcan’s strong and growing commitment to the aluminum can recycling industry," says Brian Sturgell, vice president and general manager of sheet products.

Last year, Alcan recycled a record 13 billion aluminum beverage cans in the United States, and with the addition of the new Oswego facility, the company now has the capacity to recycle 16 billion cans per year.

NORTH STAR STEEL BUILDING NEW MILL

North Star Steel BHP Steel Company recently broke ground on a $400--million, flat-rolled steel recycling minimill on a 515-acre site just west of Delta, Ohio. The mill is expected to begin producing steel by late 1996, and will ship 1.5 million tons of new hot-rolled coil steel annually using an electric-arc furnace to recycle steel scrap. The company says the scrap will come from processing operations in the Upper Midwest.

North Star Steel BHP Steel Company is a 50-50 joint venture between BHP Steel, a business group of the Broken Hill Propriety Company Limited of Australia, and North Star Steel, a Cargill subsidiary based in Minneapolis.

PROLER RECYCLING EXPANDS PLANT