The company is recognized for the invention of the OCC Auger Screen, which eliminates the need for presorting.
CP Group, headquartered in San Diego, has been named the National Waste & Recycling Association’s (NWRA) 2022 Innovator of the Year for the patented OCC (old corrugated containers) Auger Screen.
The award recognizes “recycling equipment designers and manufacturers that successfully challenge and advance recycling sector operations. It celebrates innovation in design and manufacturing that increases the effectiveness or efficiency of recycling equipment and operations.”
The OCC Auger Screen is a nonround anti-wrapping, anti-jamming machine that does not require an upstream presort and creates a finished OCC product. Because the screen is cantilevered, all wrapping materials screw off the end, minimizing maintenance and cleaning. The screen fractionates out the smaller material stream, so sorters only see the larger stream which improves sorter safety by reducing exposure to sharps. The patented nonround attribute of the auger flights creates the agitation needed to produce a clean OCC product.
The machine prototype design was completed in 2017, and the first machine was manufactured in 2019. After months of testing, that prototype machine was installed in the Waste Connections Ecosort facility in Eugene, Oregon, which processes commercial material. It is still running today.
Over the past several years, CP has invested in its production capabilities to keep pace with growing demand. With this specialized flight-forming machine and CP’s manufacturing capabilities, CP fulfills orders in-house. This includes the production of the patented nonround auger of the OCC Auger Screen that creates the material agitation needed to produce a clean OCC end product.
The first residential material recovery facility (MRF) began using a nonround OCC Auger Screen for the direct and final screening of OCC material operation in late 2021. The Metro Waste Authority (MWA) MRF in Des Moines, Iowa, is the first high-volume single-stream MRF in North America to operate without a presort or post sort station of any kind. All removal of nonprogram material is performed at quality control stations or is the negative sort of the system – which is a 100 percent reduction in labor dedicated to nonprogram material. This is because of the innovation of the OCC Auger Screen paired with the CP Primary Auger Screen.
“MWA is the first single-stream processor in the world to adopt and implement the OCC Auger Screen,” MWA Executive Director Michael McCoy says. “The screen, located at the front of the system, captures more material, decreases contamination, significantly reduces maintenance downtime, and eliminates the presort, making the process safer and much more effective.”
This is a landmark MRF that brings the entire industry a significant step closer to full automation, while also reducing labor and downtime caused by the challenges of traditional presorts.
“The OCC Auger Screen is truly a first-of-its-kind innovation that lends itself to the next phase in MRF process evolution and automation,” CP Group Director of Sales and Marketing Ashley Davis says. “It is the catalyst to the MRF of the future by eliminating the presort and enabling more automation.”
Several OCC Auger Screens are in production, and even more are in the quote process. CP says it thanks the NWRA, Arlington, Virginia, for this prestigious award that recognizes the value that CP and this machine have brought to the industry.
Metals trading firm announces $127 million refinancing measure.
Oryx Stainless Group says it has increased its financial flexibility with a syndicated credit facility in the amount of 125 million euros ($127 million), replacing an existing such facility at what it calls an early stage. The Germany-based company says the move was made “against a background of higher raw material prices and delivery volumes.”
In the announcement, made jointly by Oryx and HSBC Deutschland, the metals trading firm says, “This refinance guarantees sufficient liquidity for further growth planning.” Oryx says the credit agreement serves mainly to finance the working capital of the European Group companies and to provide collateral in connection with its commodity hedging business and adds that the arrangement “is parallel to a credit agreement in Thailand for the Asian business of the group.”
The transaction was agreed to with what Oryx calls “a long-standing unchanged consortium of six banks and runs for a period of three years, with an option to extend for a further year.”
Included in the documentation is an option to increase the loan amount up to 145 million euros ($148 million). The banking consortium includes HSBC Germany “as sole book runner and mandated lead arranger, with Commerzbank, DZ Bank and Rabobank (mandated lead arrangers) as well as NRW Bank and Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf (lead arrangers),” according to the announcement.
Founded in 1990, the Oryx Stainless Group, with its parent company Oryx Stainless Holding B.V., describes itself as one of the world's leading trade organizations for raw materials in the production of stainless steel. The focus of the company's business activities is on the handling and processing of stainless steel scrap into what it calls Oryx Stainless Blends. “These secondary raw material blends, individually fine-tuned for each stainless steel producer, replace, above all, primary raw materials,” Oryx says.
In the 2021 financial year, Oryx says its activities “saved about 2.5 million tons of CO2” emissions because of its supplies of recycled raw materials.
Technology provider Sesotec is helping Re-Glass lift Hungary’s glass recycling rate to new heights.
The European Union has set ambitious recycling targets for all of its member countries, and, in some cases, gains will need to be made to reach those looming goals.
In Hungary, up until 2016 RE-Glass Kft., with a head office in Orosháza and other yards in Budapest and Mezoörs, Hungary, processed 7,000 to 8,000 tons of flat glass per year, while bottle glass—because of the lack of modern processing technology—was only 1 to 3 tons per year.
As Hungary has only flint glass production, there was only a market for flint-colored flat and packaging glass domestically. The collected and treated mixed packaging glass was exported as mixed glass.
In 2016, Mátyás Máthé became the new owner of RE-Glass, assisted by Ferenc Aszódi as the firm’s managing director.
Although Hungary had been lagging behind the EU-wide average and standards for collecting and recycling discarded glass, the government of Hungary plans to introduce a deposit fee system in 2023 for packaging glass, designed to help meet EU expectations.
Máthé and Aszódi say, “These two pieces of information have induced us to embark on a major development that is going to be able to process the heavily contaminated glass waste from the current collection system. It will also be able to process the larger amount of cleaner glass waste generated by the deposit fee collection system.”
In 2018, Máthé and Aszódi visited the IFAT exhibition in Munich. There, they met several suppliers of sorting technologies before choosing KRS GmbH, a subsidiary of Schönberg, Germany-based Sesotec GmbH. In cooperation with KRS, RE-Glass has now built what it calls the most modern plant in Hungary for sorting and processing bottle glass, capable of processing 8 to 10 tons per hour.
Foreign materials posed the biggest challenge to the new plant. Contaminants such as ceramics, stones and porcelain (CSP), metals, paper and plastics comprise as much as 15 to 20 percent of the total weight of all collected glass. To overcome this challenge, KRS supplied a sorting system that meets several requirements
Four Spektrum separation systems are connected in the line. They separate foreign materials such as magnetic and nonmagnetic metals, CSP, non-transparent plastics and special glass materials, and sort the mixed glass by color. The results are contaminant-free and color-pure streams of glass material, says Sesotec.
The plant was commissioned in October 2019. Less than a year later, an additional 600-square-meter (6,450-square-foot) hall was added to house new equipment. Surrounding the hall is an approximately 3,500-square-meter (37,600-square-foot) paved area with an 800-square-meter (8,600-square-foot) covered and 600-square-meter (6,450 square feet) open storage area.
Hungarian companies, in cooperation with KRS, built the supporting structure of the halls, manufactured and installed the conveyor belts and the electrical wiring, and also built the programmable logic controller (PLC) system for the plant.
A trial run took place in September 2020, during which KRS specialists set up the sorting units and installed the Sesotec Visudesk software. With Visudesk, it is possible to monitor the four Spektrum sorters remotely, make fine adjustments and track error messages. In this way, KRS can check settings and provide remote support if necessary, according to Sesotec.
The technology provided by KRS and Sesotec makes it possible to produce high-quality recycled glass the companies say is the perfect product for reuse in the glass industry. “Color sorting technology has helped us increase the amount of flint glass that we produce for the domestic market,” Máthé says.
“At the same time, our mixed glass exports now contain a smaller proportion of flint glass. The processing quality and quantity have also increased. We hope that our government will introduce a deposit system as announced. With a new deposit system in place, we can continue to successfully operate in three shifts, or even begin to operate continuously using the equipment supplied to us by KRS.”
Máthé continues, “However, our latest technology line selects all foreign materials (magnetizable and non-magnetizable metals, individual paper and plastic waste); four optical sorters are built one behind the other to ensure that ceramics and wire glass are also taken out of the glass waste. Therefore, a completely contamination-free glass product is obtained.”
Aszódi says, “Additionally, we sort mixed glass waste collected by us or our partners by color. Above all these, according to the demands of our customers, we are able to set the color selection rate with an accuracy of 1 to 2 percent. One of our Hungarian partners produces glass foam from zero to 6 millimeters and glass cullet. So, you can say that the glass waste we process continues its life as a 100 percent glass product. The circular economy is a reality, and RE-Glass is making a big contribution here.”
U.K.-based company explores RFID tracking application in plastic packaging reuse.
PragmatIC Semiconductor Ltd. is studying the use of radio frequency identification/near field communication (RFID/NFC) technology in plastic packaging reuse applications.
PragmatiC, based in the United Kingdom, says RFID/NFC is widespread in some supply chain management applications “but now it has become viable to leverage this technology for high-volume, low-cost consumer goods packaging, enabling item-level traceability and data analysis for sustainability reasons.”
The company says retailers and brand owners “have made public ESG [environmental, social and governance] commitments and are under pressure to turn words into action, so they are now looking closely at digital innovations. New smart reusable packaging programs could help reduce their environmental impact.”
The U.K. company says along with reuse programs, mechanical recycling would remain viable as “the last step in the process after each bottle has been reused for as long as it is safely possible to do so.”
PragmatIC adds that RFID/NFC tracking “gives retailers and packaging service providers the information to make the right decisions to ensure economic viability, operational efficiency and [the] least environmental impact for reuse at scale.”
Some reuse trials have taken place but they have struggled to scale economically and operationally while being environmentally beneficial, PragmatIC says. “Challenges include reverse logistics, packaging design, consumer resistance [and] safety,” it adds.
At the same time, the technology provider says, “Global brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi have made commitments to reuse packaging. New technology could help make this possible at the scale needed.”
The company continues, “PragmatIC is working with partners and leading retailers to use novel flexible electronics and RFID/NFC to improve traceability within food and drink supply chains.”
Among the reuse opportunities with RFID/NFC, PragmatIC says, is digitalization that enables data generation to measure and optimize the system. Such measurements can include “material flow, item provenance, washing efficiencies, consumer engagement and data-driven packaging life cycle analysis.”
Pennsylvania-based company says its service can save on replacing costly stainless steel components.
Hanover, Pennsylvania-based Gerard Daniel Worldwide says recyclers and other users of vibratory separator machines have a bottom line-related reason to consider its screen refurbishment service.
“With Gerard Daniel’s rescreening program, users can recycle their screens and save money—in most cases more than 25 percent per screen,” the company says. Gerard Daniel says it developed the program in response to the increasing price of stainless steel, saying the cost of the metal has doubled since 2020.
Using what it calls a proprietary process designed to preserve the rings in as-new condition, Gerard Daniel’s rescreening program removes old worn screens from their frames. After removing the epoxy and mesh from the rings, the screens are replaced and the assemblies are returned to the customer, ready to use, according to the firm.
“The greater the number of screens shipped to Gerard Daniel at any given time, the greater the savings by virtue of amortizing the shipping costs over higher quantities,” the company adds.
Gerard Daniel says users who are not seeing optimal productivity from their machines can benefit from the knowledge of its application engineers—mesh “experts” who can recommend a mesh replacement to improve performance without having to purchase completely new assemblies. Gerard Daniel also can store customers’ screens as inventory in its warehouse.
The company says it has deep supply chain resources and multiple locations in the United States, as well as Canada and Ireland, to respond to customer needs quickly.