Dive Brief:

• Upstate Shredding is building a $7.5 million scrap metal processing plant in Owego, NY that is set to open by the end of this year, as reported by Environmental Leader.
• The facility will process up to 15 tons of zorba (a shredded mix of nonferrous metals) per hour, which will be sourced from auto shredding operations. Upstate will use this to produce a variety of aluminum commodities and circuit boards extracted by color sorting technology.
• The project is being financed by a $1 million grant from the New York Empire State Development grant and the remainder is coming from private sources. The facility will create 25 jobs.

Dive Insight:

According to Upstate it is the largest privately owned scrap metal processing and recycling operation on the East Coast. The company now has 18 locations in New York and Pennsylvania. Their new Owego facility is being touted as one of the only of its kind in the country.

The company has been active with acquisitions in recent years and CEO Adam Weitsman has been very open with his ambitions for growth. This year Upstate received an Industry Leadership Award from the Platts Global Metal Awards.

Recovering more value from scrap vehicles is also a priority for the plastics industry, as evidenced by the new Automotive End-of-Life Vehicles Recycling Demonstration Project which was recently launched. This pilot will focus on recovering polypropylene and thermoplastic olefin auto parts. An estimated 15 million vehicles are scrapped in the U.S. every year and recyclers are looking for new ways to get as much value out of them as possible.