Recycling not scrapping
The world is full of scrap metal merchants but few have taken their business to the level of professionalism Jeff Daniels found in South Africa.
At one end of the spectrum you have the seedy scrap merchant where you can still find a market for lead nicked from a church roof. At the other end, you have a slick organisation such as UCG Recycling. Both are handling waste metals but one is doing it by instinct, while the other is providing a wide-ranging recycling function for mines and manufacturing.
UCG is located in Krugersdorp, midway between Johannesburg and Pretoria in whatÔÇÖs now known as GautangÔÇöa third subdivision of Transvaal province. ItÔÇÖs right in the belt of small cities running across the region, full of both large and small manufacturing plants, many of them servicing the gold mines found in that area.
The business was established in 1998 by Tony Herman, in response to a need for recycling waste metal into a usable product for mainstream product manufacturers. In a decade itÔÇÖs grown into a ┬ú40 million business, employing 250 people.
UCG sees itself as an alternative to mining and refining raw materials from scratch. It argues that recycling offers an economically attractive method of acquiring raw materials when compared to the cost and environmental impact of mining. As such, UCG buys from manufacturers, processes the waste and sells raw material to those companies producing metals in bar, rod and billet form. It deals in all types of stainless steel, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, with a particular interest in high-temperature alloy scrap.
For collection and distribution of this secondary metal, UCG has a twenty-strong mixed fleet of vehicles with their own lifting facilities, as well as skip vehicles, hook-bin trucks and normal flatbeds, shuttling around 700 six and twelve cubic metre storage bins where scrap is collected. For faster response times, all vehicles are fitted with satellite detection devices.
UCG then matches different processing techniques to the various scrap materials in order to maximize the value to suppliers and to meet the specifications of consumers further down the supply chain. Whether sorting stainless steel scrap by spectrometer or compressing new black sheeting into dense bales, UCG has the most efficient options at its disposal for converting the purchased scrap into quality raw materials for customers both locally and internationally.
In an industry where sharp practices are not unknown, UCG Recycling, under HermanÔÇÖs guidance, has sought to establish and protect its reputation for honesty, reliability and efficiency, positioning itself as a secondary metal supplier and processing plant rather than a general ÔÇÿscrap dealerÔÇÖ.
As well as training collection teams to provide a service that is efficient, speedy and courteous, considerable effort goes into reassuring scrap sellers that they are being treated fairly, with safeguards on important issues such as weighing and securing scrap. It goes without saying that the fully certified 22-metre, 60-ton weighbridge is regularly serviced, calibrated and tested. All transactions are photographed for ease of reference and measurements are linked directly to the UCG mainframe computer.
Once scrap metal arrives at one of several sites, it is checked and weighed. A copy of all weighbridge tickets is supplied to sellers specifying the weight and details of the scrap metal thatÔÇÖs been collected.
Surprising as it may seem, there can be an issue with some scrap being contaminated with radioactivity, as well as a host of other more commonplace impurities. UCG has invested in the latest technologies and clean facilities to detect and isolate contaminated materials, in order that customers can be assured of high-quality materials, free from harmful impurities of any kind.
UCG Recycling is the largest processor of iron and steel scrap on the West Rand and is a major supplier to most local foundries and mills. Ferrous scrap is graded, sorted and processed to suit each customerÔÇÖs furnace applications or reusable steel requirements. Staff are trained to be thoroughly vigilant for foreign bodies at all stages of processing.
There are four main processes for cleaning, sizing and upgrading ferrous materials: shearing, baling, cropping and gas cutting. For mill consumption, UCGÔÇÖs 550-ton hydraulic shear produces clean-cut grades of ferrous scrap. For critical quality specifications, there are alternative baling presses to produce 650mm by 750mm or 300mm by 300mm new black bales. Cropping is the most labour intensive of activities but produces specifically sized dense in-feed material for foundry applications. When over-sized materials are being processed, they first need to be gas cut in order to be prepared quickly and efficiently.
Alternatively, some customers want punchings, sorted and packed into drums, used primarily as ballast. But regardless of the process, ferrous pricing is based on the Rotterdam Metal Exchange as indicated in the metal bulletin.
UCG Recycling is also active in trading and processing non-ferrous metals such as copper, lead, zinc, aluminium and their respective alloys of brass and bronze. The most commonly used processing is to prepare high-density 300mm by 300mm bales for foundry and export applications. Often, copper arrives dirty and needs to be cleaned in a rasping process before being cut into smaller pieces. The final product is accepted worldwide and satisfies the most stringent quality specifications. For specialist or niche foundry consumption, non-ferrous materials can be reduced to any size the customer specifies. Non-ferrous pricing is based on the London Metal Exchange (LME) and fluctuates accordingly.
The third product group is stainless steel with a minimum of 10.5 per cent chromium content. Here, incoming materials need to go through spectro-analysis first, in order to segregate different materials and then be stored separately to prevent cross-contamination.
Of course, many companies want to handle their own scrap, so for them, UCG offers a number of different processing solutions based around the refurbishment and reconditioning of material processing plant and equipment. It operates an active market for second-hand shears, balers, croppers and the associated grabs and crushers that go with it.
