Metal Watch

STEEL WORKERS BATTLE AGAINST NEW MINIMILL

Since the announcement by LTV Steel, Cleveland, that the company is building and operating a new minimill called Trico in Decatur, Ala., with two foreign investors, steel workers at one of LTV’s main mills in Cleveland have been outraged. Recently, the protest by workers reached a crescendo when various LTV employees spoke out against the minimill at the company’s recent shareholders meeting.

Attending the meeting itself was also an issue as workers apparently attempted to stage a walkout from work to attend, but LTV officials tried to squelch the protest by issuing an edict stating that employees who missed work to attend the meeting might risk being fired. LTV officials say that there has always been a policy at the company that in order to attend the shareholder meeting, workers must take a vacation day, and can’t simply walk off the job. Union officials, however, say that they never encouraged a job walk-out. Collectively, the LTV workers own a percentage of the company.

The steel workers contend that the Trico minimill will jeopardize jobs at LTV’s older mills in Cleveland and East Chicago. The union has even taken out billboard space along a major Cleveland highway to urge support against Trico.

ANNACO RECYCLES EARTH DAY CANS

Annaco Inc., the largest buyer and processor of scrap metal in Akron, Ohio, collected 133 tons of aluminum cans for recycling from 3,450 area residents the week of April 20 through 27. In an effort to educate and encourage Akron residents to recycle, the company paid sellers a special "Earth Week" price of 52 cents per pound in conjunction with daily prize drawings.

PROJECT TARGETS STEEL FROM TIRES

The Scrap Tire Management Council, Washington, and the Steel Recycling Institute, Pittsburgh, are working to develop markets for the steel bead and belt wire from scrap tires. The goal of the project is to reduce the cost of processing scrap tires and reduce associated waste while increasing the amount of tire steel recycled.

Passenger car and light truck tires contain about 2.5 pounds of high grade (ASTM 1070) steel, and truck tires can contain as much as 20 pounds each. The potential for scrap-tire generated steel recycling could reach 415 million pounds within the next two to three years.

STMC has provided the metal composition of the steel used in beads and wire belt to SRI, which will work with its members to develop general specifications for scrap tire-generated steel. These will then be published by STMC, along with a listing of metal recyclers interested in accepting the material.

"At present, only a few scrap tire processors are selling their wire to the metals market," says Michael Blumenthal, executive director of STMC. "However, with an increasing demand for smaller-sized, wire-free tire-derived fuel, more whole scrap tire ground rubber processing facilities and improved scrap tire processing capabilities, more companies will be able to generate the rubber-free wire that the secondary metal market can accept."

ALUMINUM CAN MANUFACTURERS CRACK DOWN ON MRF UBCs; PROCESSORS DISLIKE DRACONIAN MEASURES

Citing increased contamination levels, several aluminum can manufacturers are putting the lid on used beverage containers that originate from material recovery facilities. The announcement was made at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries' annual convention this past April in Orlando, Fla. Alcoa, Pittsburgh, will no longer accept aluminum UBCs from MRFs unless the MRF has first been pre-certified by Alcoa. The company had a fire in its delaquering facility due to high levels of contamination from UBCs.

Alcan Aluminum Corp., Cleveland, has similar concerns about the contamination level of cans originating from MRFs but has stopped short of any certification action. Instead, the company says it wants to work with MRFs to correct contamination problems, and will even go as far as to return finished product so that the MRF operators can gauge their quality assurance.

Processors at the meeting expressed concerns that they would have to take extraordinary precautions to produce the quality level the can manufacturers are asking, and fear that draconian measures to remove small amounts of contamination and moisture may damper recycling efforts and danger profitability.