Continuus Materials, a WM-backed company manufacturing roofing panels from recycled materials, recently shut down its primary production facility for unknown reasons. 

The plant in Des Moines, Iowa, closed Nov. 1 and displaced 32 workers, according to a state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification announcement. Continuus’ Des Moines location was the only known manufacturing facility for Everboard, its sole product. 

Neither WM nor its joint venture partner, private equity firm Tailwater Capital, responded to emails seeking comment about the facility’s closure. The website of Texas-based Continuus is still operational, but the company did not respond to emails requesting comment. Carton Council, an early supporter, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Everboard, the commercial roofing material, is made from a proprietary mix of paper and plastic products including cartons and flexible packaging. The roof cover boards are designed to be recycled or reused, according to Continuus.

Notable customers included Target, Taco Bell, Amazon, Coca-Cola and Cisco, as well as universities such as Xavier University and Colorado College, according to its website. Since 2018, the company has installed 240 projects in 38 states, according to its website. Those projects diverted an estimated 44 million pounds of paper and plastic from landfills, it said. 

A history of Continuus

Continuus and WM had a previous partnership history before the company was known for its Everboard product. WM once partnered with Continuus, then known as Continuus Energy, to operate the WM-backed SpecFuel facility in Philadelphia. SpecFuel was an alternative fuel product that used recycled paper and plastics extracted from MSW as a feedstock. 

Continuus began producing Everboard after purchasing Iowa-based ReWall in 2018. WM in 2022 announced a joint venture with Tailwater to take a majority stake in Continuus and provide “financial, commercial, and operational support” to scale its production facilities. 

The venture also aimed to launch what WM described as the “first full-scale municipal solid waste-to-Everboard production plant” meant to produce more than 150 million square feet of the material within the first three years. 

The company had at one time named Pennsylvania as the location for a second facility that would have been located near a WM landfill, but a Continuus subsidiary in Pennsylvania was closed out in September, according to state records. 

After the joint venture was announced, Continuus hired several new executives to the team in 2022. In June 2023, the company website listed more than 20 named employees, but today it lists just eight. The LinkedIn page for Thomas Redd, the company’s CEO in 2022, shows he left the company in July. Chief Development Officer Todd McCollough, who joined the company in 2022, also left this summer, according to LinkedIn.

Other WM investments

WM has mainly focused spending on its own MRFs as part of a plan to invest $1.4 billion in new and upgraded recycling facilities across North America from 2022 to 2026. It recently completed several projects, including in California, Pennsylvania and Florida.

In the last few years, WM has announced investments in several secondary processing companies that aim to turn harder-to-recycle materials into new products.

In 2022, WM announced it would acquire a majority stake in plastic film recycling business Natura PCR, which focuses on processing plastic film and shrink wrap. The company was previously owned by Avangard Innovative. 

WM invested $150 million in Natura’s 300,000-square-foot facility, making it the largest facility WM operates, said Vice President of Recycling Brent Bell during a recent interview. Operations started over the summer, and the location is producing plastic pellets and selling them to end markets, he said. Equipment will continue to go through testing and commissioning to get the lines up to full capacity. 

WM also invested in Canada-based textile recycling startup Debrand in 2022. That company announced in July it had opened its first U.S. textile sorting facility. 

Cole Rosengren contributed reporting to this story.