Schnitzer Massachusetts shredder back online

Portland, Oregon-based Schnitzer Steel Industries reportedly resumed the operation of its super-sized shredder in Everett, Massachusetts, in the second week of November after a repair project that took nearly five months.

In mid-November, Argus Media reported the shredder had restarted after a second shutdown related to a shredder fire that took place in December 2021. Although Schnitzer had restarted the Everett shredder in late January of this year after repairing the initial fire damage, Argus says ongoing “issues involving the shredder's regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO)” caused the company to shut the shredder back down this June.

In its most recent report to shareholders, Schnitzer remarked that its “ferrous and nonferrous sales volumes were impacted by tighter supply flows resulting from the drop in prices and the extended shredding operation outage at the company’s Everett facility.”

Argus, which also tracks metal pricing, says the prolonged summer and autumn 2022 Everett shredder outage caused shredder feedstock prices (such as for auto hulks) in New England to have “plummeted and have remained depressed compared with pricing in other markets [since] the shredder went offline.”

This October’s Recycling Today list of auto shredders in the United States lists the Schnitzer shredder in Everett as one of six metal shredding plants either operating or being installed in Massachusetts.