The bill would update federal regulations for the global shipping industry.

The American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), Washington, says it has endorsed Senate bill 3586, the Ocean Shipping Competition Reform Act of 2022, by a vote of the industry’s legislative policy council.

The bipartisan bill, introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and John Thune, members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, would update federal regulations for the global shipping industry. The bill is designed to make it harder for ocean carriers to unreasonably refuse goods ready to export at ports and would give the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) greater rulemaking authority to regulate harmful practices by carriers, its sponsors say.

“South Dakota producers expect that ocean carriers operate under fair and transparent rules,” Thune says in a news release about the bill. “Unfortunately, that is not always the case, and producers across America are paying the price. The improvements made by this bill would provide the FMC with the tools necessary to address unreasonable practices by ocean carriers, holding them accountable for their bad-faith efforts that disenfranchise American producers. … Especially with record inflation in prices of goods, this legislation would also benefit consumers by promoting the fluidity and efficiency of the supply chain.”

“Congestion at ports and increased shipping costs pose unique challenges for U.S. exporters, who have seen the price of shipping containers increase four-fold in just two years,” Klobuchar says in that same news release. “Meanwhile, ocean carriers have reported record profits. This legislation will level the playing field by giving the Federal Maritime Commission greater authority to regulate harmful practices by carriers and set rules on what fees carriers can reasonably charge shippers and transporters. As we work to improve our supply chains, I’ll keep fighting to establish trade opportunities for the U.S.”

The AAPA says the proposed legislation would preserve “fluidity charges” that prompt cargo owners to keep their goods from piling up on severely limited terminal space.

The AAPA represents 80 deep-draft U.S. ports, which indirectly support over one-quarter of U.S. gross domestic product and 31 million jobs.

The AAPA President and CEO Chris Connor says, “U.S. ports are moving more goods than ever—to foreign markets, to American homes, to American businesses.

 “As shovels start hitting the ground for port capacity expansion, thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Klobuchar-Thune bill will further help the system by prioritizing cargo fluidity and increasing access for American businesses and consumers.

“The pandemic has laid bare the need for a transport system to be able to surge and stretch—across all links, from sea, to land, to rail, to warehouse, to consumer,” Connor continues. “Incentives like fluidity charges keep cargo from piling up on the proverbial ‘baggage carousel.’ These fluidity charges are 100 percent proven to decrease the long-dwelling cargo at ports, which was a major cause of congestion during the early stages of the pileups. We look forward to seeing this bill through the mark-up process, and to both the strengthening of fluidity provisions and putting Federal investment dollars to their highest use."

The AAPA says ports, terminal operators, carriers and longshore workers have been working around the clock to keep clearing cargo, including by using expanded gate hours and emergency “sweeper ships.” However, the association says, in the longer term, America’s trade infrastructure will need sustained investments greater than those in the infrastructure law, including hundreds of billions of dollars for maritime infrastructure alone, to keep up with the growth in trade.

In partnership with Oiken, HES-SO Valais-Wallis and EPFL, the company will establish a collaborative research and development laboratory at Novelis' Sierre plant in Switzerland.

Aluminum rolling and recycling company Novelis Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, has signed a long-term collaboration agreement with HES-SO Valais-Wallis in collaboration with EPFL of Energypolis Campus, a Swiss innovation and research hub, and energy distributor Oiken to start a joint research and development (R&D) laboratory to advance carbon-neutral solutions for aluminum manufacturing.

Net Zero Lab Valais will be at Novelis' plant in Sierre, Switzerland. The company says the Sierre site, the broader Valais region and Switzerland itself are ideal for the planned initiatives because of the availability of renewable energy and strong research institutions, as well as a firm commitment to sustainability. The lab will focus on identifying and implementing solutions to neutralize the carbon footprint of Novelis' manufacturing operations and neighboring communities, with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality for scope 1 and 2 emissions at the plant by 2030.

"As the industry leader and the world's largest aluminum recycler, Novelis is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 or sooner," Pierre Labat, senior vice president and chief strategy and sustainability officer, Novelis, says. "This partnership underscores that commitment, and we expect the research to allow for greater innovation in advancing our efforts to create a sustainable world together."

Net Zero Lab Valais will work to identify decarbonization solutions and will launch an ecosystem in which Novelis, in collaboration with Oiken, will share the energy from its Sierre plant with the surrounding area. This will help lower the area's carbon footprint, as well as the carbon footprint of the manufacturing site, according to Novelis.

"We are working relentlessly on reducing all emissions at our sites, in our supply chain and in the energy we use," says Emilio Braghi, executive vice president, Novelis and president, Novelis Europe. "The Net Zero Lab Valais is another lever for increasing energy efficiency, reducing waste and supporting our communities. We will develop innovative solutions that we can later implement on a broader scale at our different production sites across the globe, while we simultaneously continue to work on increasing the recycled content in our products to deliver the lowest total carbon footprint for aluminum sheet. We are very proud to have such strong and experienced partners as HES-SO Valais-Wallis, EPFL and Oiken at our side to drive carbon-neutral production."

François Seppey, director of HES-SO Valais-Wallis, says, “This lab will be an ideal ecosystem to develop outstanding skills for early career engineers and enhance their contribution to the decarbonization of the whole industry in the near future."

"The Net Zero Lab Valais is a model for joining efforts between research and industry to decrease the carbon footprint of a region and understanding symbiosis between industrial activities and the energy system," says professor François Marechal, head of the Industrial Process and Energy Systems Engineering group in EPFL. "The same time, it will give early career talented engineers the chance to gain valuable insights and knowledge in applied and fundamental research."

"The Net Zero Lab Valais is an important initiative to help decarbonize the region," says François Fellay, CEO of Oiken. "In addition, by supplying waste heat into the future district heating system, Novelis' manufacturing site will also become a major contributor to our low carbon energy system." 

Steelmaker’s executives say more ferrous scrap already being used and additional EAF capacity is being considered.

In a wide-ranging and colorful conversation with five steel industry analysts, CEO Lourenco Goncalves of Cleveland-Cliffs said the company’s use of ferrous scrap has been rising and later this decade it might consider adding to its electric arc furnace (EAF) capacity rather than paying for a blast furnace reline.

In his opening remarks, Lourenco Goncalves said of the Cleveland-based firm’s record 2021 earnings, “With this record annual profitability, we put the cash we generated to good use. We reinvested in our business, acquired the leading prime scrap processor in North America.”

The 2021 acquisition of Detroit-based Ferrous Processing & Trading Co. (FPT) figured into several remarks CEO Lourenco Goncalves and Cleveland-Cliffs Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Celso Goncalves made.

The CFO commented, “We have been offsetting our coke usage by increasing the usage of HBI (hot briquetted iron) in our blast furnaces and increasing the percentage of scrap in the charge of our BOFs (basic oxygen furnaces).”

CEO Lourenco Goncalves touted the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) aspects of the transaction, saying: “Another ongoing important matter for the future of Cleveland-Cliffs is our commitment to ESG. That was evident with our purchase of FPT, the national leader in prime scrap.”

Lourenco Goncalves also portrayed the steelmaker’s ownership of FPT as a competitive advantage. “Since closing the deal on Nov. 18, we have made substantial moves, securing a number of additional sources of prime scrap offtake, most notably the largest automotive stamping plant in the country. This particular stamping plant alone generates more than 150,000 tons of prime scrap per year. Our agreement replaced an incumbent scrap company, who has been servicing this stamping plant for decades, even before this scrap company was acquired by a minimill, several years ago.”

Lourenco Goncalves continued in the conference call, “Our deal was made possible with a compelling proposition. This automotive manufacturer buys the steel, primarily from Cleveland-Cliffs, and now we can feed their scrap directly back to our steelmaking shops. This is not just recycling steel. It’s a real closed loop. A closed loop is a key piece of our automotive clients’ environmental strategy, as well as a key piece of our own environmental strategy at Cleveland-Cliffs.”

Despite its roots in Minnesota iron range mining, processing and shipping, Lourenco Goncalves portrayed a steelmaking future moving away from some of the traditional technology. “On the carbon emission side, we continue to lower our usage of coal and coke by increasing the utilization of HBI as a significant part of the burden in our blast furnaces. While our flagship direct reduction plant in Toledo was originally built to supply third parties EAFs with HBI, this HBI is now being, exclusively, used in-house within Cleveland-Cliffs, the vast majority in our blast furnaces, playing a central role in lowering both our coke rate and our CO2 emissions.”

Scrap also is part of the equation, he said. “With the use of additional scrap in our BOFs, our iron ore needs are not as high as before, and we no longer need to run our mines throughout. We will be idling all production at our Northshore mine starting in the spring, carrying through at least to the fall period and maybe beyond. At Northshore, no production, no shipments, no royalty payments,” he said of the facility in Silver Bay, Minnesota.

“Our strategy to stretch hot metal by adding increased amounts of scrap to the BOFs is working extremely well,” continued Lourenco Goncalves. “With more scrap in the BOFs, we need fewer tons of hot metal to produce the same tonnage of liquid steel. As a consequence, the Northshore idle could go longer than currently planned.”

While many of the company’s current mills use blast furnace/BOF technology, Lourenco Goncalves said the use of more EAF technology is likely for Cleveland-Cliffs. “EAFs continue to be unable to demonstrate that they can compete and produce the entire spectrum of specs demanded by the car manufacturers,” he remarked. “A blast furnace reline is a capital expenditure-heavy undertaking, albeit totally expected in our multiyear projections. In some cases, the capital requirements of a new EAF compared to the avoidance of reinvesting in a blast furnace reline and its associated supply chain could come out close to a wash. If and when that happens, the wash or better, we might consider an EAF as a replacement to a blast furnace reline in the future.”

BOF technology is not going away completely, the CEO also made clear. “You reduce emissions not [by] building EAFs. You reduce emissions [by] melting scrap, instead of melting pig iron with 4 percent carbon content. And that’s what we’re doing in our steelmaking shops. FPT is key for that.”

He continued, “My thing with EAFs is when it’s time to rely on blast furnaces, it costs a lot of money. We can, instead of relining the blast furnace, put up the EAF to melt scrap. And by the way, we have a lot of scrap because we own a scrap company. When is that going to happen? I don’t know, in the future. Certainly not in 2022. I don’t believe it will be in 2023 either.”

After its two years of mill and scrap processing purchasing activity, Lourenco Goncalves expressed frustration with analysts or media outlets who continue to refer to Cleveland-Cliffs as a mining firm. “We still are called an iron ore company, every now and then,” he remarked. “How many years do they need to learn that we are no longer an iron ore company?”

Two more topics Lourenco Goncalves covered included the progress of EV sales in the U.S. and the notion of a more consolidated steel industry in the country.

Lourenco Goncalves, who has been unapologetic about lofty steel prices, similarly defended consolidation in the sector. “We changed the industry completely, 100 percent,” he says of the Cleveland-Cliffs mill buying strategy. “We created the basis for everybody here in the U.S. to make a lot of money. Even the analysts recognize that without our actions on consolidating this industry, no steel mill, no service center and several others throughout the entire supply chain would have made money, as we all made money in 2022. So, for you guys that are listening to this call with disguised names, you are welcome. I got you that. So, that was the biggest synergy that we implemented, not just for ourselves but for the entire steel industry.”

Regarding EVs, Lourenco Goncalves says Cleveland-Cliffs is well-positioned for any changes brought about by a shift from internal combustion engine (ICE) to battery power. “My strategy on the environment is to support the ones that really knock down emissions,” he commented, saying the steel industry in America accounts for only 1 percent of carbon emissions in the U.S.

ICE vehicles, meanwhile “put out [into] the atmosphere 29 percent of the total CO2 that pollutes the air, here in the United States,” said Lourenco Goncalves. Cleveland-Cliffs, he said, “are the only ones producing grain-oriented electrical steels that goes into transformers. So that’s for us. We are the only one, at this point, producing non-oriented electrical steels that go into the engines. There’s a lot going on in the automotive industry in terms of changing models and redesigning and respecifying materials for these new EVs. We are the suppliers of all of them. It’s always that Cleveland-Cliffs steel.”

The full 23-page transcript of the 2021 Cleveland-Cliffs earnings call can be found on this web page. 

The plastics recycling machine manufacturer cites increased demand for larger machines, recycled content and short shipping times for the higher sales.

Polystar, a plastic recycling machine manufacturer based in Tainan, Taiwan, has reported that equipment sales have doubled in 2021. The company says high demand for plastic recycling machines for postindustrial and postconsumer applications globally impacted sales.

According to a news release from Polystar, new regulations in various countries now require producers to use a higher percentage of recycled content in flexible and rigid packaging products. The company says the instability of raw material prices and supplies requires plastic producers to better recycle their byproducts.

In light of the increase in demand, Polystar says by the end of April 2022, more than 110 recycling machines will be shipped within 12 months. That figure is twice as many compared with last year.

Polystar says several reasons led to the increased drive sales in 2021, including increased demand for larger machines, product reliability and company services.

According to Polystar, the need for larger capacity machines and more machines has increased. The 800- to 1,000-kilograms-per-hour, or 1,700- to -2,200-pounds-per hour, pelletizing extruders have become a standard for postconsumer and some postindustrial recyclers. 

Focus also has increased on reusing internally generated scrap by plastic producers, the company says. Businesses including packaging film and woven bag producers now require higher quality recycled content to reduce production costs as much as possible. 

Polystar says its Repro-One recycling technology is a combination of shredder, extruder and pelletizer in one machine. This one-step process produces the best possible pellets quality at the lowest operation cost, according to the company, enabling producers to reuse pellets back in polypropylene tape extrusion lines.

The packaging film sector and plastic bag producers are required to use a much higher percentage of recycled pellets in the end products. For better quality control and to maximize the reusability back into the film extrusion lines, more producers have decided to recycle their production scrap internally instead of outsourcing it, the company says.

Recent installations of the Repro-Flex recycling machines, a cutter-compactor integrated model designed for recycling film scrap in Denmark, Italy and Switzerland, are equipped with features that minimize energy consumption and labor intervention.

The impact of COVID-19 continues to present various supply chain issues, resulting in high shipping costs and a shortage of supply. As demand for recycling machines remains strong, Polystar says it continues to prepare in-stock recycling machines to avoid long delivery times.

The company says it can better serve customers with faster machine delivery times and spare parts support by keeping machine components in stock. Polystar's manufacturing facility in Taiwan continues to operate at 100 percent during this time, ensuring customers receive the recycling machines within a short time.

Polystar says the delivery time for standard recycling machines like the Repro-Flex 85, Repro-One and Repro-Air is 30 to 45 days.

The funding would go toward projects that bolster domestic battery manufacturing and recycling.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued two notices of intent to provide $2.91 billion to boost production of advanced batteries that are critical to rapidly growing clean energy industries, including electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage, as directed by the infrastructure law.

The department intends to fund battery materials refining and production plants, battery cell and pack manufacturing facilities and recycling facilities that create good-paying clean energy jobs. The funding is expected to be made available in the coming months and will ensure the United States can produce batteries, as well as the materials that go into them, to increase economic competitiveness, energy independence and national security.

In June 2021, the DOE published a 100-day review of the large-capacity battery supply chain, pursuant to Executive Order 14017, America’s Supply Chains. The review recommended establishing domestic production and processing capabilities for critical materials to support a fully domestic end-to-end battery supply chain. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocates nearly $7 billion to strengthen the U.S. battery supply chain, which includes producing and recycling critical minerals without new extraction or mining and sourcing materials for domestic manufacturing.

“As electric cars and trucks continue to grow in popularity within the United States and around the world, we must seize the chance to make advanced batteries—the heart of this growing industry—right here at home,” says U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “With funding from bipartisan infrastructure law, we’re making it possible to establish a thriving battery supply chain in the United States.”

With the global lithium-ion battery market expected to grow rapidly over the next decade, DOE says it hopes to make it possible for the U.S. to be prepared for market demand. Responsible and sustainable domestic sourcing of the critical materials used to make lithium-ion batteries—lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite—will help close the gap in supply chain disruptions and accelerate battery production in America.

Funding from the infrastructure law will allow DOE to support the creation of new, retrofitted, and expanded domestic facilities for battery recycling and the production of battery materials, cell components and battery manufacturing. The funding will also support research, development and demonstration of second-life applications for batteries once used to power EVs, as well as new processes for recycling, reclaiming and adding materials back into the battery supply chain.