The company aims to offer efficient online trading of sustainable commodities.
Circular.co, Palo Alto, California, has launched its full-service digital platform that introduces a new way to buy and sell sustainable commodities at scale, starting with a focus on recycled plastics. The platform helps essential industries evolve to a more sustainable future by offering efficient online trading, accessible data and transparent economics, according to the company. Circular’s digital infrastructure tools are designed to simplify supply chain logistics by doing all the sourcing, vetting, matching, contracting, shipping and billing for its customers. Buyers and sellers can trade with confidence backed by a full guarantee and a dedicated concierge to facilitate the entire process.
“Circular’s focus is on the big economic and environmental picture behind helping brands and major manufacturers access the materials they need to meet sustainability goals,” says Circular’s founder and CEO Ian Arthurs. “There is more than enough [recyclable] material out there to meet demand, but the industry has lacked the infrastructure and economic transparency to support greater recovery and circularity.”
“Circular selected recycled plastics to start because of the scale of opportunity and challenge this industry faces,” says Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner, Eclipse Ventures and board member of Circular. “Over 380 million tons of virgin plastic are produces each year and global recycling rates remain under 9 percent, dropping to under 5 percent recently in the U.S. This results in oceans of waste, microplastics in our bloodstream and roughly 2 gigatons per year of C02 pumped into our atmosphere.”
“The plastics industry is essential to the global economy and clearly needs to evolve sustainably as fast as possible,” says Madigan-Curtis. “The digital tools required to help this sustainable evolution already exist in other industries; it’s inevitable they will apply to the plastic industry; our aim is to expedite the process.”
As a leading early adopter of sustainable packaging, Method and Ripple Foods founder Adam Lowry realizes the challenges companies face sourcing quality recycled material.
“We applaud major brands and manufacturers setting sustainability goals to reduce their dependence on virgin plastic. Now is the time to take real action on those pledges,” Lowry says. “With positive economics, recyclers are investing in more capacity, and Circular’s digital platform gives buyers and sellers more options, making trading easier. For the first time in over a decade, I feel confident we’ve got the right ingredients for real change.”
“By delivering a transparent digital trading experience, brands and manufacturers can now confidently buy sustainable materials at scale,” says Arthurs. “This creates a clear economic opportunity which in turn stimulates innovation to create more supply, more liquidity and ultimately greater circularity, less waste and less C02. Marrying the best of technology with the reality of how plastic is bought, creates a real win-win, which is ultimately Circular’s goal.”
Circular says its leadership team is uniquely positioned to deliver on its objectives, bringing decades of technology platform experience from the likes of Google, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Bloomberg, Snap and Medium. Complementing that, Arthurs added a deep branch of senior industry advisors, including Lowry and executives in the recycling and manufacturing spaces. Rounding out the team, Circular secured Eclipse Ventures, a top venture capital firm helping entrepreneurs build exceptional companies that make physical industries more efficient, resilient and profitable, as their lead investor. The combination brings an unparalleled depth of expertise in digitizing physical industries, including manufacturing, supply chain and logistics.
Rob Dillard will be responsible for the company's global finance functions as well as strategy and corporate development.
Sonoco, a Hartsville, South Carolina-based sustainable packaging company, has announced Rob Dillard has been named chief financial officer (CFO), effective July 1.
Dillard, 48, most recently served as the company's chief strategy officer. In his new role, he will be responsible for Sonoco's global finance functions, including audit, controllership, financial reporting, tax, treasury, risk management and insurance, financial planning and analysis, as well as strategy and corporate development.
"We are pleased to have Rob assume this critical finance leadership role," Sonoco President and CEO Howard Coker says. "Rob is a strategic leader within the company and brings extensive experience in corporate finance and accounting, operations, strategy and corporate development from both Fortune 500 companies and investment banking."
Coker continues, "As our new CFO, Rob will use his experience and deep knowledge of Sonoco's culture and strategic opportunities to partner with our global business leaders to further drive performance improvement and shareholder value."
Dillard takes over for Julie Albrecht, who announced May 25 she was departing the company June 30. Albrecht joined Sonoco in March 2017 as corporate vice president, treasurer and assistant CFO, and the company says she has been instrumental in its activities to improve cash flow generation, de-risk and annuitize its domestic defined pension plans and finance more than $2 billion in strategic acquisitions.
Dillard joined Sonoco in 2018 and Sonoco says he has led its corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions activities in that time, including leading the development of the company's overall strategy, which includes the $1.35 billion acquisition of Ball Metalpack—Sonoco's largest acquisition to date.
The new Stadler PX acceleration conveyor integrates the best features of the BB and DB conveyors for optical sensor sorting.
Equipment manufacturer Stadler, Altshausen, Germany, has released the Stadler Px acceleration conveyor. The company says it launched the equipment to meet the demand for higher throughput in sensor-based automatic sorting, which can operate at higher working speeds.
The company says it has integrated features of its BB and DB conveyors and has taken the opportunity to introduce a host of improvements. They include a new air stabilizer, which ensures consistent sorting quality at faster speeds with light materials, resulting in purity of the output.
“At Stadler, we are always very alert to how our customers’ needs evolve,” says Corinna König, the team leader of product management of Stadler. “We found that we were increasingly combining our BB and DB conveyors in customers’ projects to achieve the desired result, so we developed the PX, which combines the best features of each into one conveyor. This means that our customers now have only one machine to operate and maintain, simplifying their operation and reducing their costs.”
König says they also significantly increased the belt speed, even with light materials, so they can increase their throughput with just one machine.
Italian company Irigom Srl has installed six PX conveyors at its secondary solid fuel (SSF) plant, designed to separate and recover all valuable material from the incoming plastic waste. The recovered polyethylene terephthalate (PET), low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and polypropylene (PP) are sent to a recycling facility while the residue is used to produce high-quality SSF. The conveyors have been operating for three months, sorting PET, LDPE and PP materials for recovery, metals and polyvinyl chloride, which is removed from the process.
“The PX is performing very well. The fast speed up to 4.5 meters per second allows us to significantly increase the total material input while maintaining a high-quality output,” says Stefano Montanaro, CEO of Irigom.
The new PX conveyor carries over the solid frame construction and long service life of its predecessors, the BB and DB models. It features a slot to fit a sensor under the belt and is compatible with NIR and EM sensors from various manufacturers. It offers a belt speed ranging from 3.2 meters per second to 4.5 meters per second and can be specified with two motors to ensure the necessary torque at the required speed. The head drum is available in a choice of two diameters: 125mm and 220mm for the best detachment of the material.
The material on the conveyor is accelerated and straightened so that the sensors fitted in the slot can detect the material on the conveyor at all speeds. An optional stabilizer improves performance by optimizing the positioning of the material on the belt with an airflow. The result is a higher throughput with consistently high sorting quality and higher purity levels of the blown-out fraction, even at top speeds with light materials such as paper or film.
The PX benefits are compact in size and designed for easy transport. The frame, with the belt already mounted, can be separated into three or four sections, depending on the length of the conveyor. These can be stacked for transport and are simple to reassemble on-site. Even the model with the widest, 2900mm belt can be loaded on standard trucks or containers, also cutting down on transport costs.
Steel Dynamics, U.S. Steel join Nucor in second quarter guidance pointing to profits.
Two more United States-based steel producers have joined Nucor Corp. in offering second quarter 2022 earnings guidance that point to the likelihood of sizable profits.
Fort Wayne, Indiana-based electric arc furnace (EAF) mill operator Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) is referring to “record second-quarter 2022 earnings guidance” it places in the range of $6.33 to $6.37 per diluted share.
Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp. is likewise pointing to “a new all-time best second-quarter performance” in the current timeframe. The operator of both blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace and EAF mills is predicting second quarter 2022 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of approximately $1.6 billion, or in the range of $3.83 to $3.88 per diluted share.
EAF producer SDI says its profits exclude the impact from costs associated with the startup of the company’s Sinton, Texas, flat roll steel mill.
Second-quarter 2022 earnings from the company’s metals recycling operations, which includes those of subsidiary OmniSource Corp., are expected to be “significantly higher than sequential first-quarter results, based on strong demand supporting increased shipments and higher pricing,” says SDI.
SDI’s second-quarter 2022 profitability from its steel operations is expected to be historically strong but lower than first-quarter 2022 results in light of lower earnings from the company’s flat roll steel operations, as lower average flat-roll steel pricing is expected to more than offset increased flat roll steel shipments.
Demand for SDI long steel products is strong, says SDI, “supporting increased average realized pricing and expected record shipments for the company’s Engineered Bar Products, Roanoke Bar, and Structural and Rail steel divisions.
David B. Burritt, president and CEO of U.S. Steel, comments, “We expect to continue delivering record performance in the second quarter, with each business segment meaningfully contributing to profitability. Our broad end-market exposure keeps our business resilient with demand across a diverse customer base, including the resurging energy market. Our focus on strategic end markets and the continued realization of significantly increased fixed-price contracts is again expected to generate another quarter of record performance.”
Commenting on the company’s capital allocation strategy, Burritt continues, “Our balance sheet remains strong with an overfunded pension plan and no significant debt maturities until 2029. Our strategic projects are pre-funded, with a current cash position approaching $3 billion, and we accelerated our stock buybacks in the second quarter. We continue to invest in the business with high confidence and are well-positioned to execute on our Best for All strategy and capital allocation framework.”
Scrap feedstock makes up 98 percent of metal producer’s Circle Green stainless steel.
Finland-based metals producer Outokumpu says it has set a “new standard for the world’s most sustainable stainless steel,” launching a product line called Circle Green it says has a 92 percent lower carbon footprint than the industry average.
Energy sources and consumption throughout the production change contribute to the low emissions footprint, but the company says using stainless steel and nickel scrap as raw material feedstock also is a critical factor.
“Recycled materials played an important role in producing the emission-minimized stainless steel [that] we call Circle Green,” Päivi Allenius, a vice president with Outokumpu, tells Recycling Today. “By using scrap we can avoid using primary raw materials, as their impact on the product's carbon footprint is the most important,” she adds.
Allenius adds, “Our recycled material content is normally at 90 percent and in this case it was clearly even more than that—98 percent.”
Circle Green, in addition to having a 92 percent lower carbon footprint than the global average, has a 64 percent smaller footprint compared with Outokumpu’s regular production, says the company.
“We are extremely proud to introduce a new product line, Outokumpu Circle Green, which is truly an innovation in the stainless steel industry and a result of our focused learning journey,” says Niklas Wass, an executive vice president with the company. “The first batch was produced in Tornio, Finland, and was delivered to one of our strategic customers, Fiskars Group, to use for cookware. I’m extremely proud that we have launched a product that has a true impact on our customers’ climate ambitions.”
Wass continues, “We see increasing global customer demand for low-carbon footprint stainless steels, from construction to heavy industry and consumer products. I’m very happy to say that Outokumpu is now ready to answer this demand. In this first phase, we will concentrate our efforts to serve a few strategic customers, but we are already looking at ways to scale up the production.”
In addition to using more scrap, Outokumpu says it achieved emission reductions with “meticulous production and quality optimization” that led to higher energy efficiency. Biogas, biodiesel, bio coke and low-carbon electricity are being used in production to eliminate 95 percent of all Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions, says the firm.
“Our emission-minimized product answers the global need for more sustainable and long-lasting products that help to build a more sustainable future,” says Wass. “The material was produced on an industrial scale with our existing production assets. This is a key step and an essential achievement towards meeting Outokumpu’s sustainability goals.”