China’s new standards for the allowable contaminants thresholds for scrap imports is causing severe disruption on commodity trading worldwide. Automobile shredder operators are forced to slow down non-ferrous plants, add manual labor, and change processes in an effort to create products they can sell.
Some automobile shredder operators are now redirecting their commodities to domestic third party processors and are forced to take a much lower sale price than they have been historically paid. This is all while the cost per pound to produce these commodities has gone up. In many cases, without a reasonable outlet to sell them, commodities such as Zurik and shredder wire (insulated copper wire from shredder residue) are being stockpiled.
Aware of the effects of the sweeping changes occurring in the scrap metal marketplace, WENDT developed a variety of innovative solutions to help our customers. The key is matching the correct solution with the customer’s market situation. We work collaboratively with our customers to know what is important to their business.
Slight additions can be made to an existing plant in cases where increasing profits through improving product purity and throughput is required by the customer. These improvements include pre-processing and post processing changes that can be retrofitted into legacy plants or new plant designs.
Many customers are not only looking to increase margin by an increase in purity, but rather taking the next step by creating even greater margins by producing products they can sell directly to a smelter domestically and abroad. In these cases, WENDT has developed complete metal sorting systems to create furnace-ready commodities. These systems also give the customer the flexibility to change the products being produced to meet the ever changing dynamics of the market.
To minimize the risk of these essential decisions for our customers, WENDT is making a multi-million dollar investment at our Technology Center in Buffalo, NY. Featuring core technologies from our technology partner TOMRA, this advanced metal sorting facility will permit truckload demonstrations of upgrading Zorba and Zurik to be purer products or fully upgraded to furnace ready commodities.
For other low-grade mixed metal packages, such as shredder wire, WENDT’s technology partner MTB has developed a new economical solution to produce high purity, furnace ready products. This solution is highly flexible and can upgrade a variety of feedstocks.
As the industry leader in non-ferrous recovery and sorting plants, WENDT has a track record of being quick to adapt to changes in the scrap market by investing in research and development. It is our goal to reduce customer risk, utilize best in class technology, vet new processes and confirm a business case with a good return on investment.
