Celadon invests $155M in recycled brown pulp facility - Recycling Today

2022-05-21 14:36:59 By : Ms. Ann Jiang

The company plans to open its headquarters and a recycled brown pulp facility in Savannah, Georgia.

Georgia Gov. Brian P. Kemp has announced that Celadon Development Corp. plans to invest more than $155 million to open its North American headquarters and a state-of-the-art recycling and advanced manufacturing facility in Savannah, Georgia. The facility will produce recycled fiber pulp. Celadon is a joint venture partnership of Kamine Development Corp. and Nicollet Industries. The company was formed to deploy large-scale recycled brown pulp infrastructure across North America.

According to a news release from Gov. Kemp’s website, this investment represents the first phase of Celadon’s investment in the state. In addition to establishing a North American headquarters and a recycled brown pulp manufacturing facility, Celadon will open a second production line of its recycling and manufacturing operations during the second phase of its expansion in Georgia.

Celadon Development Corp.’s Savannah plant will produce 450,000 tons per year of recycled fiber pulp during phase one, and it will produce 900,000 tons per year of recycled fiber pulp after phase two is completed. Upon completion of the second phase, the company expects to export about 87,000 20-foot equivalent units of finished product through the Port of Savannah annually.

This month, the company already has opened a 65,000-square-foot dry processing plant for clean old corrugated containers and plans to establish a logistics operation in Savannah to facilitate its logistics needs, the news release from the governor’s office states.

“The state of Georgia, the Georgia Ports Authority and the Savannah Economic Development Authority have made our project possible,” says Tim Zosel, CEO of Celadon Development Corp. “The teams are incredibly proactive, and we could not have developed this project without their support.”

Celadon also made news earlier in 2021 when the Port Tampa Bay Board of Commissioners in Florida announced Celadon’s plans to lease 37 acres of land from in Tampa, Florida, to construct a paper and cardboard recycling plant.

Kamine Development Corp. did not provide Recycling Today with details on the timeline for the Port of Savannah project.

Nonprofit environmental organization receives grant to add foam densifier to current recycling center.

The Ray Lovato Recycling Center, a nonprofit environmental organization in Rock Springs, Wyoming, has received a $29,000 grant from the Foodservice Packaging Institute’s Foam Recycling Coalition (FRC) to add a foam densifier to its current recycling center that recovers recyclable materials from residents and businesses within the area.

The center is located within the economic center of southwest Wyoming and serves about 13,000 households and diverted nearly 1.72 million pounds of materials from the landfill in 2020. Its goal is not only to maximize diversion of materials from its local landfill through unique recycling programs, but it also has made a mission to provide second-chance employment to community individuals with developmental disabilities, drug and alcohol addiction and veterans with PTSD.

At its facility of over 6,000 square feet, materials accepted include corrugated cardboard, office paper, paperboard, newspaper, magazines, books, aluminum, tin and plastics.

The FRC funding will allow the center to purchase and install a foam densifier unit to begin processing polystyrene (PS) products that will be collected at its drop-off center from local businesses and residents. The densifier will allow the organization to collect many types of PS products, including foam foodservice packaging and protective packaging.

“Our area is home to immense mineral resources employing a large portion of our private workforce,” says Devon Brubaker, board president of the Ray Lovato Recycling Center. Brubaker adds with few large retailers in the area, the center has seen a significant amount of e-commerce packaging. The packaging, along with food-grade foam products, will provide the center a large diversion opportunity with the help of this new densifier.

The grant is made possible through contributions to FRC, which focuses exclusively on increased recycling of postconsumer PS. The FRC’s members include America Styrenics, Cascades Canada ULC, CKF Inc., Chick-fil-A, Dart Container Corp., Pactive Foodservice/Food Packaging, Republic Plastics and TOTAL Petrochemicals & Refining USA.

The Ray Lovato Recycling Center is the 21st grant recipient to receive FRC funding since 2015. More than 4 million additional residents in the United States and Canada can recycle PS as a result of FRC grants.

“The Ray Lovato Recycling Center is providing the necessary services to recycle clean and empty foam packaging that is generated by local businesses and residents,” says Natha Dempsey, president of the Foodservice Packaging Institute, which oversees FRC. “The center demonstrates how an organization can set an example with its own mission and continue to expand its operations after having success and seeing an opportunity to increase diversion from the landfill.”

Julie Zaniewski of Dow shares the goals of the Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund, of which Dow is a founding funder.

Earlier this year, Dow, LyondellBasell and Nova Chemicals established the Circular Plastics Fund with an initial investment of $25 million. Closed Loop Partners, New York City, is managing the fund, which will invest in scalable recycling technologies, equipment upgrades and infrastructure. The fund is seeking additional investments from businesses across the plastics value chain, with the goal of growing to $100 million to help advance the recovery and recycling of plastics in the U.S. and Canada.

Julie Zaniewski, Packaging & Specialty Plastics sustainability director, North America, at Dow Chemical Co., which is headquartered in Midland, Michigan, says the fund grew out of the founding funders’ recognition that they were each involved in pilot projects to advance plastics recycling and that it made sense to share their experiences. The Circular Plastics Fund is designed to help the supply chain understand what works from a technological perspective to accelerate and scale these developments, she says. “There is a multiplier effect with this type of funding,” Zaniewski adds, which is concentrated on plastics that typically haven’t been the focus of funding—polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

The Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund’s investments aim to recycle more than 500 million pounds of plastic over its lifetime, which will be 10 years, Closed Loop Partners Director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives Georgia Sherwin told Recycling Today when the fund was launched.

Closed Loop Partners says the Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund will invest in three strategic areas to increase the amount of recycled plastic available to meet the growing demand for recycled content in products and packaging: access, optimization and manufacturing.

The fund’s investments seek to increase collection of PE and PP by advancing material collection systems, including transportation, logistics and sorting technologies and infrastructure. The Circular Plastics Fund also seeks to upgrade recycling systems to more efficiently aggregate, classify and sort targeted plastics to increase the total amount of the material, including food-grade and medical-grade plastics, sent for remanufacturing. Additionally, the fund will invest in facilities and equipment that manufacture finished products, packaging or related goods using recycled content.

The fund will make investments throughout the value chain rather than concentrating on one area to elicit the most impact. “There will be a breadth and depth of investments in the mix. The goal is to improve the entire system,” Zaniewski says. That could mean providing funding to improve technology in one instance or to support an end market in another.

“We see this as catalytic,” she says of the Circular Plastics Fund, noting that it is a way to bring other stakeholders to the table.

Projects that receive funding must track and meet impact metrics. Impacts to be measured include tons of PE and PP diverted from landfill and tons of greenhouse gas emissions avoided or reduced, Zaniewski says.

Dow is mindful that greenwashing is a concern in the plastics recycling sector, which is why impact metrics are important, she says.     

Zaniewski adds that the potential impacts of prospective projects also will influence where funding goes.

The fund will deploy a flexible mix of debt and equity financing in the form of below-market-rate loans and will aim to stimulate mainstream co-investments, including those from financial institutions, Closed Loop Partners says. The minimum investment size will be $1 million, while the average investment period will range from three to five years, with the exception of bridge loans, Sherwin told Recycling Today when the fund was launched.

Zaniewski says an advisory board will have input on the projects to be funded. “One of the things that we liked about this structure is that it is not necessarily left up to the funders to make those decisions. It’s really a collective of understanding what the best options are. It also provides speed, quite honestly.” While representatives of the funding companies will be advisors, they are not necessarily the decision-makers in terms of the investments, she explains.

The Circular Plastics Fund also will work with other funds that Closed Loop Partners manages, complementing each other’s efforts, which Zaniewski says is critical from an impact perspective and in terms of being “swift and purposeful” in where the funding goes.   

She adds, “We also hope that this can be looked at as a demonstration of how some funds can be used to create systems change,” particularly as extended producer responsibility, or EPR, programs for packaging are brought online. “We see this fund as working with those types of systems. Once you have funds in a system, how do you best allocate those funds in a system to improve and progress it?”

Zaniewski adds that Dow supports EPR, provided such programs are “fair, flexible and fix the problem.”

When it comes to how the fund will help Dow achieve its circular economy goals, Zaniewski says, “There are a number of ways we’ll see that impact. We have specific goals around collecting and recycling 1 million metric tons by 2030. Then we also have a goal to what we call ‘close the loop,’ and that is enabling the recyclability of 100 percent of our products that go into packaging. Ensuring that the needs are met on a systems end and throughout the value chain is a key enabler to both of those goals.”

Zaniewski says the fund seeks to provide a space for advancing new technology that will further its adoption. She says new technology can bring support and improvement at the material recovery facility level. “Necessity really breeds resourcefulness and innovation, and [innovation] is what we want to see in this space. We want to see that our supply chains are ready for that evolving ton and ready for that evolving system.”

Dow is interested in bringing as many stakeholders to the table as possible through the fund. “I would invite anyone who is interested in bringing solutions forward. The opportunity is across the value chain. It is not necessarily about one particular end market or one particular technology. It is creating movement in the systems across different levers.”

Those interested in applying for funding can do so at www.closedlooppartners.com/closed-loop-circular-plastics-fund-apply-for-funding. 

Philadelphia-based Dossier Systems is a provider of fleet maintenance management software solutions for the surface transportation industry.

AMCS Group, Limerick, Ireland, announced Nov. 16 that it has acquired Dossier Systems for an undisclosed amount.

Philadelphia-based Dossier Systems is a provider of fleet maintenance management software solutions for the surface transportation industry. Dossier’s cloud-based solution automates the control and administration of fleet vehicles and other assets and helps increase productivity while promoting cost-savings through the generation of customizable reports, the company says. According to the company, Dossier fleet maintenance software helps companies to reduce downtime and maintenance costs, extend life of equipment, reduce parts costs and inventory, increase productivity and reduce fuel and tire costs.

Following the acquisition, the Dossier Systems’ team of almost 50 professionals, including their management team, will join AMCS. More than 750 new customers will be added to the existing AMCS customer base.

“We are very excited to expand our business with the acquisition of Dossier Systems, a brand that has earned a national reputation in North America as one of the most trusted names in the industry for fleet management maintenance management software,” Jimmy Martin, CEO and co-founder of the AMCS Group, says. “This acquisition will enable us to deliver and support Dossier’s unique SaaS (software as a service) solution for fleet maintenance on a global scale. We will be bringing the solution to the AMCS Platform where we envision integrations with our current solutions including ERP (enterprise resource planning), smart dispatch, mobile workforce, vehicle technology and route optimization so customers can benefit from a unique set of integrated capabilities. We look forward to welcoming new team members and integrating our combined teams under AMCS while continuing to innovate and grow in response to global demand.”

“I’m excited for Dossier to become part of AMCS and believe our customers and staff can look forward to a bright future,” Jack Boetefuer, CEO and owner of Dossier Systems, says. “Personally, I’m honored to have had the opportunity to lead our wonderful team to this point. Dossier’s reputation for excellence in fleet maintenance management has been earned through lots of hard work and dedication going back to our beginnings in 1979—I fully expect that to continue under Jimmy’s leadership. Dossier is in good hands.”

President Biden officially signed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law Nov. 15.

President Biden officially signed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law on Nov. 15. The bill, which had been the center of partisan debate for much of Biden’s presidency, was passed by Congress Nov. 5.

The bill promises to help rebuild roads, bridges and rail; expand access to high-speed internet; reduce the impacts of climate change; advance the availability of clean drinking water and promote a variety of national sustainability efforts.

Specific to the waste and recycling sector, the bill contains provisions of the RECYCLE Act, which will help provide grants via the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help educate households and consumers about their residential and community recycling programs to improve participation and reduce contamination. It also calls for the EPA to develop a model recycling program toolkit for states, local governments, Indian tribes and partners to deploy to improve recycling rates and decrease contamination in the recycling stream.

The bill also contains grants to encourage battery recycling and promotes the DRIVE-Safe Act, which directs the Department of Transportation to promulgate regulations to implement an apprenticeship program for licensed commercial motor vehicle drivers under the age of 21 to help alleviate the driver shortage across industry, including in waste and recycling.

Upon signing the legislation, Biden outlined various priorities of the infrastructure initiative, including an emphasis on avoiding waste, buying American, creating good-paying jobs, and building resilient infrastructure that can withstand the impacts of climate change.

To help with the rollout and implementation of the infrastructure legislation, Biden announced the coordination of an Infrastructure Implementation Task Force. This task force will be co-chaired by National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and the White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu.

Previously, Biden noted that the infrastructure bill will help: