That technology helps keep more waste out of landfills. And the company was also ready to help in the aftermath of the Baltimore bridge collapse, which was struck by the container ship Dali this year. The Chesapeake facility received and purchased salvaged metal portions of the Francis Scott Key Bridge along with material from the Dali and damaged containers, a company leader said.
The Hampton Roads scrap metal yard buys ferrous and non-ferrous metal from businesses, other recyclers and the public. In turn, it processes and sells the recycled material to manufacturers.
And on Sept. 16, the company celebrated $20 million in capital investment and innovations at its Chesapeake recycling facility in South Norfolk with a “metal-cutting” ceremony.
Colin White, environmental health and safety specialist for Sims Metal’s Southeast region, said the investment included three projects: a climate-controlled maintenance facility, a shreddables total alloy recovery (STAR) plant, a material separation facility and a Vezzani fixed shear two-story building that cuts metal down to size.
The global recycling company has come a long way since Albert G. Sims started a scrap metal collection business in 1917 in Australia.
The company is continually trying new technologies and implementing research and development projects to try to recover all the metal, said Fred Cornell, Sims Metal’s Southeast region general manager. Its mission is to create a world without waste.
Cornell explained that when automobiles are recycled, they contain a variety of materials including cloth, leather, steel, aluminum, copper, brass and others. Sims Metal recycles about 80% of the metals, but for the ones it can’t recycle, the company can now run them through the STAR plant and recover even more.
“Our goal is to get more of that metal out of the waste and go from 80% recovery to 85%, to 90% and hopefully to 100%,” he said.
Stressing the importance of a “circular economy,” Cornell said Sims receives metal that’s at the end of its life, including cars, appliances and steel from demolished buildings.
“We take those materials — because they have value and can replace more products — and we prepare them so they can be used in steel,” he said.
The prepared steel is shipped to local steel mills that melt scrap metal to produce new steel.
“That new steel is then used by steel manufacturing companies to produce products,” Cornell said.
The final cog in that wheel — and part of the company’s capital investment — includes its new on-site maintenance facility built most likely, Cornell said, in part from Sims Metal’s recycled materials.
White explained that the fixed shear machine takes pieces of structure up to 8 inches thick, cuts it down and separates out any non-ferrous and ferrous metal. It runs on renewable electricity.
“It’s a huge win for our industry, from an environmental standpoint,” White said.
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