Personnel Notes

Waste Management promotes chief financial officer to president

The board of directors for Houston-based Waste Management Inc. has named James Fish Jr. to the position of president, reporting to David Steiner, the company’s CEO. Fish will retain his existing role as chief financial officer while the company conducts a search to fill that role.

“The board of directors and I have a strong and ongoing focus on succession planning, and the next logical step in that process is for Jim to be appointed president,” Steiner says.

“In his 15 years with the company, Jim has been pivotal to the success of our business, and this appointment is extremely well-deserved,” he continues. “He is a talented leader with tremendous knowledge of and expertise in all aspects of our business and has an impressive track record of delivering results and driving shareholder value.”

“I am excited to take on this role and humbled by the confidence David and the board of directors have demonstrated in me,” Fish says.

Vecoplan adds mobile division national sales manager

Robert (Bob) Korkos has been named national sales manager, mobile division, at Vecoplan LLC, Archdale, North Carolina.

Responsible for managing sales of Vecoplan’s shred trucks, Korkos will oversee the launch of Vecoplan’s new MST Series, which employs Axo dual-shaft, pierce-and-tear shredders on full-sized (33,000 gross vehicle weight, or GVW) and 26,000 GVW non-CDL (commercial driver’s license) truck chassis. His other responsibilities include working with the R&D department to develop technologies for Vecoplan shred trucks and with the marketing department to introduce these innovations.

Korkos brings more than 30 years of industrial equipment and fleet management experience to his new position, having spent the last 14 years in the secure destruction industry, starting, managing and then selling two companies.

Chief Sales Officer Bob Gilmore says Korkos’ “market-specific, real-world expertise ... will be invaluable in our ongoing efforts to engineer and build the best shred trucks in the industry.”

SWANA names new director of membership

The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland, has hired Darryl Walter as its director of membership.

Walter comes to SWANA after leading membership development for associations such as The Wildlife Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Actuaries. He is credited with having increased membership by more than 40 percent during his tenure at The Wildlife Society.

With SWANA reaching a record of more than 8,500 members at the close of fiscal year 2016, Walter says he plans to keep the momentum going and membership growing.

Regarding his new role with the association, Walter says, “SWANA has an established reputation in being the leading membership association for solid waste professionals in the United States and Canada, and I look forward to increasing our influence and membership throughout the industry by providing an exceptional experience for our members.”

RRS adds new principal

The board of directors for sustainability and recycling consultancy firm Resource Recycling Systems (RRS), based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has named Michael Timpane a principal of the firm and has elected him to the RRS board as of July 1, 2016.

Prior to joining RRS in January 2015, Timpane served as director of municipal recycling and diversion for Houston-based Waste Management Inc. He is a 40-year veteran of the recycling industry.

Timpane joins Susan Graff and Anne Johnson, who received their appointments Jan. 1, 2014, as the newest principals at RRS. Additional RRS principals include Jim Frey, JD Lindeberg, Marty Seaman, David Stead and Nicole Chardoul.

As an RRS board member and principal, Timpane has voting rights and is a minority shareholder. He will continue as vice president of process optimization and material recovery, focusing on RRS clients on material recovery facilities, mixed waste processing and corporate sustainability, as well as on solutions for material diversion. He operates out of Jacksonville, Florida.

Novelis announces executive leadership appointments

Novelis, an Atlanta-based aluminum rolling and recycling firm, has announced a number of senior executive moves.

Emilio Braghi was named senior vice president of Novelis Inc. and president of Novelis Europe, effective Sept. 1, 2016.

He joined Novelis in 1999 as sales manager, Europe, and has held a number of roles with the company. Most recently, Braghi served as vice president, operations, Novelis North America, where he oversaw the region’s eight manufacturing facilities, which recycle and roll aluminum for automotive, beverage can and specialties markets.

Tom Boney was named vice president of operations, North America, effective Sept. 1. In this role, he will be responsible for manufacturing operations across the region with a focus on safety, quality, cost and delivery performance.

Boney joined Novelis in 2006 as plant manager, Oswego, New York. In 2007 he was named president, Novelis Europe Rolling and Recycling. In 2009, he was appointed vice president, manufacturing excellence, where he had global responsibility for leading the company’s operational excellence initiatives in EHS and Continuous Improvement.

Ganesh Panneer was appointed to the role of vice president and general manager of automotive, North America, also effective Sept. 1. In this role, he will lead all aspects of Novelis’ North American Automotive business, including sales/commercial activities, program development and launch, supply chain and logistics, demand forecasting, service and order fulfillment.

Panneer joined Novelis in 2011 as director of corporate strategy. His next role with the company was in the North America automotive value stream as director of sales. In 2013, he was named vice president and general manager, specialty, for Europe. Panneer returned to North America in 2015 in the role of vice president and general manager of light gauge and specialties, which he held prior to this recent appointment.

Fuchs appoints customer support leader

Fuchs, with its U.S. headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, has announced an appointment to the North American after-sales support team. Noah Devine will lead all aspects of service, parts and warranty efforts for the material handlers and will work closely with distributors and customers to develop training and support programs. He will report directly to Thomas Sandrock, the global director of product support and quality at the Fuchs factory in Germany. He is tasked with improving customer support response time throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada.

“Noah brings to Fuchs a well-rounded background in the recycling industry and the unique experience of being a material handler customer for many years,” says Jon Van Ruitenbeek, business line director and president of Fuchs North America. “He appreciates the urgency from the customer’s perspective to quickly resolve an issue with a machine in the field, and he is the right addition to our support team.”

Before joining Fuchs, Devine was the recycling maintenance manager for Republic Services in Lakeland, Florida. He also worked as the U.S. asset and operations manager for OneSteel Recycling and as the asset manager for Schnitzer Steel’s metals recycling business (MRB). Devine also served in the U.S. Marine Corps and spent five years as the lead instructor of the Diesel Technology Program at TAD Technical Institute in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

“I have many years of firsthand experience with operating and maintaining Fuchs material handlers, and I have experienced the many advantages Fuchs purpose-built handlers offer our customers in the recycling, scrap, port and logging industries,” Devine says.

He will work with from Louisville and can be reached at 502-200-4650 or at Noah.Devine@terex.com.