The company says it hopes to simplify the procurement process for companies.

Industrial Service Solutions (ISS), Houston, has introduced e-commerce portals for industrial components, spares and consumables.

ISS says its strategy includes multiple ways to access ISS-supplied systems, parts and spares, all stocked in the continental United States. This includes launching an online store and selling products on the Amazon Marketplace.

"To make our products as readily available as possible, we've built our own eIndustrialSolutions online store while making hundreds of items available on the Amazon marketplace as well," says Luke Worline, the Industrial Service Solutions vice president spearheading the program. "The eIndustrialSolutions marketplace centralizes online ordering from multiple legacy portals, including Midwest Valve Parts Supply Co., eCompressedAir, CompressorParts.com and Industrial Lubrication Store."

From motors, compressors, dryer systems and valves to the spare parts and consumables that keep them online, more than 470 different product brands are available for online purchase, including Gardner Denver, Ingersoll Rand, BASF, BP, Kaeser and more.

"Our e-commerce objective was to maximize customers' process-critical uptime by simplifying procurement," says Wade Stockstill, CEO of Industrial Service Solutions. "With more than 30,000 registered users accessing hundreds of thousands of products, our digital marketplace keeps industrial processes moving efficiently."

Media reports indicate noticeable damage at Imperial Aluminum in Minerva, Ohio.

A Cleveland television station is reporting that a fire at the Imperial Aluminum facility in Minerva, Ohio, about 75 miles from Cleveland, has caused considerable damage.

WOIO-TV says an explosion and fire at the scrap-melting Imperial Aluminum plant in Minerva “resulted in a structure fire” that caused at least one person to be taken to a regional hospital.

On its website, Imperial Aluminum describes itself as producing “secondary aluminum alloys with facilities to service the Southeast and Midwest. We recycle all types of aluminum scrap into the die-cast and foundry alloys specified by our customers.”

The company is part of the Chicago-based Imperial Group, which also has scrap facilities in Chicago and is a producer of some 75,000 tons annually of secondary zinc in Chicago.

Equipment and technology company also suspends orders to Russian customers.

Finland-based minerals and metals technology provider Metso Outotec has issued a review of its first quarter operations that includes references to changes it has made as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The company sold its equipment for the metal recycling sector last December, but points to activity in its aggregates recycling line as environmentally friendly.

Metso Outotec calls its work to develop a new range of electrically driven track-mounted Lokotrack crushers and screens part of its “strong commitment to contribute to the 1.5-degree climate target.”

Says the firm of Lokotrack, “This easy-to-use range of equipment will provide customers with lower operational costs and the possibility to use renewable energy sources.”

Continues Metso Outotec, “Also in April, we announced the acquisition of Tesab Engineering, which offers mostly mobile crushing equipment for aggregates applications. Tesab is a good fit for us, complementing our current offering in the mobile crushing and screening markets. We continue efforts with other potential acquisitions.”

The company says its business in now heavily sanctioned Russia “mainly consisted of large capital equipment deliveries to various mining and metals customers. In early March, the company temporarily ceased its project deliveries to Russia and is not taking new orders for deliveries to Russia. The company has no production assets or property, plant, and equipment in Russia and only marginal physical assets. The Russian business is accounted for unchanged, on a going concern basis in this interim report.”

Compared with the final quarter of 2021, Metso Outotec says its sales grew by 26 percent and its operating profits by 53 percent in the first three months of this year.

Basel Action Network sees lead pipe replacement program in U.S. as potential source of unwelcome emissions overseas.

The Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN) has expressed concern that the removal of remaining lead pipes in service in the United States, an activity that can be funded via last year’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, could “result in poisoning abroad.”

BAN, which also monitors and objects to U.S. exports of electronic and plastic scrap, adds, “Old lead pipes pose export hazard to countries with weaker pollution controls.” BAN says exported lead pipe scrap “may end up causing lead poisoning in Mexico, India and other countries if steps are not taken to recycle these materials in the U.S.”

Statistics gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau and collated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) show that in the first 10 months of 2021, some 818,000 metric tons of lead were made via scrap-fed secondary production processes in the U.S.

That compares with some 30,300 metric tons of nonbattery lead scrap exported in that same time frame, or 3.7 percent of the volume recycled within U.S. borders.

Lead also can be found, however, in some copper alloyed pipes, and spent lead-acid batteries are commonly traded across borders. In the first 10 months of 2021, some 28.9 million spent lead-acid batteries were exported from the U.S., according to the USGS.

While the USGS does not break out where lead battery and scrap exports are headed, BAN (likely citing Census Bureau data) says in 2021 “50 percent of lead scrap exports went to India and Mexico for recycling. The other half went to more than 40 other countries, including China, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bangladesh and Indonesia.”

The transboundary trading, as it has with other secondary commodities and products, has drawn the attention of BAN. “As most of the lead scrap from the U.S. is exported to countries with weaker environmental standards for recycling, the removal of old lead pipes can contribute to significant emissions from smelters in other countries,” states the organization.

The federal Infrastructure law provides $15 billion during the next five years to replace lead water pipes, with that funding potentially joined by state and local appropriations, says BAN.

“Although the Biden administration has rightly focused on environmental justice at home, dumping toxic waste on developing countries is not seen as a being a concern,” remarks Jim Puckett of BAN.

“We are calling on federal, state and local government programs to require that all lead pipes that are removed be recycled in smelters in the U.S.” comments Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of San Francisco-based Occupational Knowledge International, another nongovernmental organization (NGO) joining BAN in raising concerns.

RMDAS figures for April show a decline in heavy melting steel pricing; market may be poised for May reversal.

Steel mill scrap buyers in the United States paid more than $600 per ton on average for shredded scrap from March 20 to April 19, according to the Raw Materials Data Aggregation Services (RMDAS) of Pittsburgh-based MSA Inc.

While shredded scrap’s value eased upward by $5 per ton and prompt grades gained an incredible $73 per ton in additional value, mill buyers paid less, on average, for the No. 1 heavy melting steel (HMS) grade.

A scrap trader contacted by Recycling Today this week predicts the nearly $20 drop in value for No. 1 HMS in the RMDAS April buying period may be a sign of things to come in May. “We feel the market will be down $40 to $50 per ton next month on obsoletes and [will be] level on primes,” he says of his own company’s informal market research.

A level market on prime grades would still have it being worth some $776 per ton on the spot market, per the most recent RMDAS U.S. average. The grade remains in tight supply, and demand is high in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Three different processors or traders tell Recycling Today in April that obsolete scrap flows have been steady to rising thanks to higher scale prices and (in most places) better spring weather.

“After a winter lull, flows have rebounded nicely in our area in March and into April,” a processor in the Mid-Atlantic region comments.

A Midwestern processor characterizes flows as “very good” as of mid-April, and a scrap buyer in the Southeast remarks, “April saw good supply, weaker demand–especially for cut grades—and a lesser export market.”

With the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reporting stable mill output and capacity rates in the U.S., the export situation remains a wild card in the obsolete scrap market.

Overseas mills in Turkey, the Indian subcontinent and even Mexico (a large buyer of Russian steel slabs) are scrambling to understand and work around the impacts of steel output interruptions in Ukraine and U.S. sanctions on Russia following that nation’s invasion of its neighbor.

Both the processor in the Midwest and the Southeast point to the ripple effects of the inability of Russian pig iron to make it to many of its former destinations. “The majority of open market pig iron comes from Ukraine and Russia,” the southeastern processor says. “Many rolling mills also counted on those two countries to provide billet and finished steel. This has shifted demand onto Turkey and other Mediterranean steel producers,” which leads to more scrap demand.

The processor also points out, however, that the overall disruption “has created an energy shortage that is having an impact on those same steel producers.”

In the third week of April, Davis Index is describing Turkish mill overseas scrap buying as “restrained.” The metals information service says in an April 20 news item, “Most mills [are] refraining from buying imported material or even bidding for material in anticipation of achieving lower prices [for] May and June shipments.”

As of April 20, the most recent HMS 1&2 bulk cargo booked FOB (freight on board) from the port of New York traded at $574.75 per ton, down 2.3 percent from the previous booking, according to Davis Index.

In the domestic economy, trade groups representing the nation’s largest users of steel have been remarking on the metal’s rising price throughout the pandemic recovery months of the past year and a half. They are among those who see a definite tie-in to larger concerns about inflation.

In an early April blog post, John G. Murphy of the Washington-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that group’s 2018 prediction that steel tariffs imposed then would “directly harm American manufacturers” were on target. “All of that came to pass,” writes Murphy.

Advocating further rollbacks on Section 232 tariffs, Murphy states, “In addition to these soaring prices, analysts say widespread steel shortages loom. Steel-consuming industries represent about half of all U.S. manufacturers.”

A 2021 comment from Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves could serve as a rejoinder from the steel industry. He said it was about time that “a ton of steel is worth more than a ton of bananas.”