Page 11 from: October 2014

N E W S

11October 2014

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Liebherr
Material handling machinery major Liebherr has reinforced its sales and distribution
network in the USA. The company ‘has renewed long-term partnerships and has
extended its geographical footprint beyond its predominantly eastern US territory’,
it reports. The business has signed four new dealer agreements within the last
month and continues to evaluate new partnerships. www.liebherr.com

Newton Metal Recycling
Scrap dealer Charles Newton, whose family has run UK business Newton Metal
Recycling for four generations, has been told to pay a sum of £60 000 (around US$
100 000) after being caught with copper cable that had been reported stolen. Local
judge Colin Burn ordered the businessman to pay up or face 16 months in prison.

AMUT
Mexican plastic bottle recycling giant PetStar, which is partly owned by Coca-
Cola, has doubled its capacity thanks to a multi-million dollar investment in a
new wash plant supplied by AMUT of Italy. According to AMUT, the facility at
Poluca near Mexico City now becomes ‘the largest of its kind in Latin America’,
with the capacity to handle 1.5 billion bottles per year. www.amut.it

Avis
Avis Industrial Corporation, a privately-held company with 10 subsidiaries
throughout the USA, Canada and Mexico, has acquired IPS Balers. IPS becomes
the third baler company within Avis Industrial, joining the American Baler Co.
and the Harris Waste Management Group. The latter, with a recycling industry
pedigree dating back more than a century, was acquired in January of this year.
www.ipsbalers.com

Recylex
Given the current level of scrap battery prices, the Recylex group ‘continues to
be more selective in its purchases of materials for recycling’, it has revealed in
its latest fi nancial review. Its consolidated sales in the fi rst half of 2014 amount-
ed to Euro 220.5 million for an increase of 9% over the same period last year.
At Euro 8.3 million, Recylex almost halved its operating loss when compared to
the fi rst half of 2013. www.recylex.com

Call2Recycle
Atlanta-based battery stewardship organisation Call2Recycle has named sustain-
ability expert Leo Raudys as vice president of program development. The appoint-
ment coincides with the group’s 20th anniversary and is said to mark ‘the begin-
ning of an organisational initiative to develop new growth areas outside of
battery recycling’. It is also hoped to increase infl uence within ‘the larger realm
of environmental conservation and product recycling’. www.call2recycle.org

swissRTec
swissRTec America, Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of swissRTec International
of Switzerland, is the name given to a new venture based in Kensington, New
Hampshire. The Swiss company, which specialises in designing, building and
commissioning turnkey e-scrap, scrap metal and automotive shredder residue
recycling facilities, says the aim of the new offi ce is to expand sales in the North
American market. www.swissrtec.com

Nespresso
Coffee expert Nespresso will invest Euro 415 million (US$ 543 million) over the
next six years as part of the company’s sustainability strategy dubbed ‘The
Positive Cup’. A prime objective is to increase the recycling capacity for its alu-
minium capsules to 100% globally. www.nestle-nespresso.com

Business

Singapore is playing host to a new
joint initiative that will target e-scrap.
Involving telecommunications company
StarHub, recycler TES-AMM and courier
giant DHL, the project will enable con-
sumers to dispose of unwanted laptops,
mobile phones and other electronics via
100 bins island-wide by the end of
the year.
The three companies have signed a
memorandum of understanding to
launch the  ‘Recycling Nation’s Elec-
tronic Waste’ (RENEW) programme. An
earlier initiative headed by StarHub and
TES-AMM saw more than one tonne of
e-scrap being collected during the fi rst
three months of 2012; the total for this

year to date is 5.6 tonnes. Under the
new initiative, StarHub will provide the
collection bins and new project partner
DHL Express will transport the collected
waste to TES-AMM’s recycling plant in
Singapore’s Benoi industrial district on
a pro-bono basis.
Statistics from the National Environment
Agency show that Singapore produces
an estimated 60 000 tonnes of e-scrap
per year – with half from consumers and
half from industry. TES-AMM’s ceo Scott
MacMeekin reckons that less than 15%
of this material makes it into a respon-
sible recycling stream, and that the
RENEW programme ‘aims to raise
this fi gure’. www.starhub.com

Bin network to boost
Singapore’s e-cycling

The ever-rising popularity of
electronics means volumes of e-scrap in
India can be expected to reach 1.72 mil-
lion tonnes by 2020, according to Techi-
nAsia. But with domestic e-cycling
remaining largely unorganised, Indian
fi rm Attero Recycling has taken it upon
itself to ‘fi ll that gap’.
A start-up business
based in Roorkee,
Attero’s ‘end-to-
end’ recycling
approach has
received fund-
ing totalling
more than US$
16.5 million to
date. Currently,
the company pro-
cesses over a million
pounds of e-scrap col-
lected from 500 Indian cities
across 25 states per month. Helped by
this fi nancial support, founder and ceo
Nitin Gupta plans to set up more ‘state-
of-the-art’ waste treatment plants and
expand both its client base and opera-
tions to other countries.
‘Attero has been working to formalise

the informal sector, which handles a
major portion of e-waste in India,’ Gupta
comments. ‘The aim is to train informal
sector workers and establish a last-mile
e-waste collection channel, which will
divert e-waste to the formal sector for
responsible recycling.’

The businessman points out
that roughly 70% of

e-scrap in India is
imported.

Recent data
from the United
Nations Envi-
ronment Pro-
gramme sug-
gests that the

number of televi-
sion sets and com-

puters in India will
increase by a factor of

fi ve over the period from 2007
to 2020, and by 18 times in the case of
mobile phones. Meanwhile, the Nation-
al Aeronautics and Space Administration
in the USA (NASA) has described Attero
as a ‘waste innovator’ and gave it a spot
in its Launch: Beyond Waste initiative
in 2012. www.attero.in

Attero ready to fill the
gap in India’s e-cycling

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