Recyding phstic containers: The arrival of vertical integration

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1 Recyding phstic containers: The arrival of vertical integration by Peter Anderson and Tom Rattray U pstream vertical integration in plastics recycling can benefit not only the plastics processor, but also the end user and the municipality. Last year, a way to dramatically improve the economics of plastics recycling was identified in studies, one by the Ameritan Plastics Council and one by Procter & Gamble with Quantum Chemical (see Fixing plastic recycling, in the May 1993 issue). The stmtegy to improve plastics recycling s economics included, among other things, a recommendation to vertically integrate the entire recycling process, starting with collecting and sorting through upgrading al1 the way to molding into end products. The reason was simple: Current recycling systems have too many separate and far-flung stages at which post-consumer resins are handled and shipped - sometimes as many as eight. In general, prices paid for scrap (except in the case of high-end metals and Office paper) are insufficient to cover the accumulated cost of al1 of those hands. Yet, until this year, the plastics recycling infrastructure consisted largely of many small independent operators, few of which encompassed more than one stage of the process. The search for effkiency Vertical integration, of course, is nothing new. It typically evolves as an industry matures and begins to look for: n efficiencies in operation n stability of supply W lower transaction costs between production stages n strategies to capture the ful1 added value latent in the material. The plastics recycling industry has already begun to go beyond pencil calculations to begin integrating. Of course, for severa1 years there has been downstream vertical integration by large end users back into the sorting process. The prime example of downstream vertical integration is Wellman Industries, a Waste Management of Brooklyn, which prowsses recyclables collarge polyester textile manlected curbside in New York City, integrated vertically to manuufacturer, which fust devel-,facture trafic barricades and cones from post-consumer resin. oped systems to use postconsumer plastic soda bottles. Recently, a reliable supply of post-consumer PET. Wellman purchased one of the major players Unfortunately, backward expansion by in the materials recovery facility (MRF) mar- molders into the sorting business does not ket, New England CRInc., in part to assure bring the fruits of integration to communities. Peter Anderson is president of RecycleWorlds Consulting in Madison, Wisconsin and a senior lecturer in recycling economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tom Rattray is associate director of environmental quality for Procter & Gamble, based in Cincinnati. Resource Recycling September 1994 m

2 Yet it is the municipalities that bear the expense of collecting uncompacted, lowdensity material. Although backward integration assures the end user of a low-cost supply, the municipal recycling program continues to lose the value added. Only the party that controls the upgrading process captures that value. It should be noted that plastics recycling contains a unique potential for forward integration. In contrast with other recyclables, upgrading plastics does not require a major investment that would intimidate municipalities. While deinking mills or aluminum smelting requires millions of dollars in capital, a single plastics molding operation could be obtained for little more than $l00,000. Adding value One of the tirst major players out of the starting gate to integrate upward from a local recycling program is Waste Management of Brooklyn (WMB, no relation to WMX, the intemational garbage company). WMB is, among other things, a MRF processor for a substantial part of New York City s curbside recycling collection program. Its experience affords an opportunity to compare the calculated efficiencies assumed in those desk-top studies - about twocents per Pound - to some real-world experience. / To lower transaction costs. ti ti To achieve operating efftciencies. To assure a stable supply of materials. r/ To capture added value. (/ To control quality. It also opened a window to glimpse the kinds of added value that might be captured through integration. We went to visit the facility to see tirst hand how this strategy was working. Waste Management of Brooklyn, owned by the Joseph Lostritto family, has long been a major waste hauler in New York City. It recently won a contract with the city s recycling program to process about 300 to 400 tons per day of commingled containers and 350 to 400 tons per day of paper. When a nearby injection-molding operation set up to handle post-consumer resin went out of business, WMB saw its chance to inte- grate vertically. 1~ was able to snatch up a washer, dryer and granulator, injectionmolding machine, two molds, conveyors and inventory, al1 at fire-sale prices. Moreover, the product - traffic barricades. and traffic cones - was a perfect fit. at least on paper. And the city should clearly have an interest in providing a market for some of the material collected by its recycling program. Unfortunately, purchasing decisions in a metropolis the size of New York are so complex that closing the loop is a real challenge. Nonetheless, this link solved a lot of the marketing problem, and this has made it possible for WMB to dispense with a sales forte. For another, thick-walled products such as traffic cones and barricades that sit outside in the Street, instead of on supermarket shelves, are more forgiving of the contaminants in post-consumer scrap than, for example, a package application. It is too early to collect firm cost figures on how successful this first effort has been. The company has been operating the molding operation out of its former quarters several miles away, which means that plastic bottles will continue to have to be trucked to the molding operation from the sorting line. This will change when the MRF s planned expansion provides space for the molding operation and the sorting line under the same roof.

3 I Also, the chance to buy equipment on the auction block, obviously, will not be available to al1 businesses. Lastly, like most MRFs, WMB s overall costs have not been internally allocated among its discrete operations. Still, enough is evident to begin drawing some conclusions. The first is that the system does work. MRF operators can run upgrading equipment and molds - at least for nonprecision applications. A second is that WMB is achieving the hypothesized savings and is seeing efficiencies from eliminating expenses for: n baling the plastic sorted off the MRF line n shipping baled plastic to a reclaimer n breaking the bales at the reclaimer n shipping from the reclaimer to the molder w paying a sales forte. In addition, the other advantages the company enjoys include capturing the value added at the reclamation and molding stages, and stabilizing supply and demand through the ups and downs of the commodity cycle within their narrow niche. Net benefits To help community recycling programs decide whether this strategy might make sense for them, we jotted down some quick calculations. We used WMB data where%it existed and had general applicability. For the rest, we used generic numbers. Factors that affect the net benefits of vertical integration are listed in Table 1. Essentially, the advantage can be seen by the fact that WMB is receiving about 86 cents per Pound as the price for its value-added product made from co-polymer HDPE (1). This compares to the lost opportunity cost of six cents per Pound if WMB went the traditional route and sold the baled HDPE to a reclaimer (2). I Table 1 - Net economic advantage of PerticaHn&gration (1) Cents per pop& Price for end product fw Minus opportunity cost if sold -6 to intermediate processor Minus upgradíng cost -8 to ll Minus molding co& -8 to 15 Minus material loss cost -2 to 3 Plus baling cost savíngs +2to3 Net duect advantage 53 to 65 11) Cost figures come from the Waste Management of Brooklyn example. Source: RecycleWorlds Consuhing, However, in order to win that 86 cent brass ring, WMB incurred costs. There were expenses to clean up and flake the recovered plastic bottles and to mold the flake into an end product. There will also be a certain amount of material loss during upgrading and molding due to moisture, labels, dirt and fines in the post-consumer stream that was once baled and sold to intermediate processors. Once a MRF vertically integrates, then it will be paying for moisture instead of being paid for it, as it had in the past; in this instance, it is estimated that the total material loss would be one cent to two cents per Pound. These costs have to be subtracted from the 86 cents to estimate the net benefit. Using generic numbers - not the Brooklyn MRF s - we would expect that the cost of the upgrading process could be done for approximately Il cents per Pound on one shift (eight cents per Pound running two shifts) (3). Molding this kind of item could probably be done for about ll to 15 cents per Pound on LL single-shift operation (eight to 10 cents per Pound running two shifts) (4). Netting back in favor of this strategy are the savings from the vertical integration for the sorting operation. Generic costs for baling the plastic, which the MRF would avoid, run around two to three cents per Pound (5).

4 Marketing expenses for selling baled postconsumer resin to intermediate processors would also be saved, but are probably not significant except during tight markets. Other indirect efficiencies do not flow down to the MRF s bottom line in the form of savings relative to the baseline operation. These indirects include eliminating shipping costs to, debaling costs at and hauling cost from the reclaimer to a molder, costs that the reclaimer would have incurred in the absence of an integrated operation. They also include the expenses the molder avoids in making sales, and in many cases, controlling quality. These indirect efficiencies enable the integrated tirm to be more competitive selling its end product because the cost of feedstock to the molder and the molder s marketing costs are less than a non-integrated system s. In the case of WMB s traffic barricades, they were able to beat the previous vendor s price by 15 percent. Thus, the net direct advantage for a MRF thatcan vertically integrate its plastic operations would be substantial. Using WMB s model over the traditional mode of selling to an intermediate processor, we estimate an upper range of 53 to 6.5 cents per Pound. For a MRF processing a million pounds of HDPE each year, that might generate an additional $600,000 in net revenues each year,- perhaps adding more than a third to total revenues for al1 recyclables. Indirect savings are over and above that number. This revenue figure is presented solely to be illustrative, not conclusive. On the one hand, the benefit could be even greater. For example, WMB takes advantage of its control of the sorting process to avoid pigmentation costs in manufacturing its product. Those costs can run as high as 6 cents per pound. When the contract calls for white traffic barricades, WMB sorters pu11 white bleach bottles along with milk jugs; when blue barricades are called for, it pulls powder blue fabric softener bottles. In essence, expensive pigments are recycled as well as the resin. Another advantage that might be possible in smaller cities is the ability to go into even higher value-added applications, if the recycled plastic can be cleaned up even more. Because of the problems inherent in making recycling work in any large, older City, New York s residue rate is around 20 percent, for al1 containers and bags. In more manageable communities, contamination under 10 percent is common. With cleaner recycling streams, the post-consumer resin bottles might be upgraded into products with a higher value than trafí-ic barricades. Keys to the kingdom But not al1 businesses can pull together the elements necessary for a successful integrated plastics recycling operation. The keys to success include: n Volume. To run the mold for one shift with HDPE bottles requires more than onehalf million pounds annually. When PET bottles are included, a million pounds or more may be needed to run the washerl granulator economically. Depending on the effectiveness of the recycling collection program, this might require 100,000 to 200,000 people to provide sufficient materials to a MRF. n Forgiving end-use application. Because of contaminated post-consumer plastic bottles and problems managing small-scale upgrading activities, it is important to have an application that is tolerant of more contaminants. This can be done by making a product with thicker walls and having a. customer that is not finicky. (In the future, advances in mold technology should make it possible to more easily use less uniform resin streams in higher value-added applications.) n Market. A closed loop between the community s discarded plastic bottles and some of the plastic products purchased by that community is important to overcome problems developing new markets for a new product. In addition, the demand for the product must fit the amount of the product that s available. n Capacity and stafing. Space at the sort-

5 ing plant for more equipment and personnel with time and expertise are essential ingredients (6). When vertical integration does work, the price received by curbside recycling collection programs can be enhanced from the 5 cents- to 10 cents-range to the range of 55 to 65 cents, net of new upgrading costs. The concept seems well Worth more exploration in the future to help plastics recycling succeed over the long haul. Vertical integration is not for everyone. But WMB has shown that forward vertical integration of plastics recycling into upgrading and moldiig can work under the right conditions. Indeed, WMB is so satisfied with its first efforts that it is proceeding with an additional $1 million expansion of its plastics prccessing capability. The planned expansion includes, among other things, a new product line with 17 more molds. RR Footnotes (1) The traftic barricades weigh seven pounds and are sold in bulk under contract for $6 per unit. (2) Recycling Times, April 19, 1994, p. 5. Prices are currently higher, but this was the typical price paid at the time of our visit to WMB. (3) For this and other projects intended to improve the economics of plastics recycling, we have been looking at equipment manufacturers for systems that will wash, dry, air classify and granulate post-consumer plastic bottle streams economically with the kinds of small throughputs prevalent at MRFs. One such system we inspected that appears to tit the bill is the Plasticycler, made by PlastiCycle Industries in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It costs between $50,000- $70,000 and operates with throughputs of 500 to 1,000 pounds per hour. Our fully allocated cost estimates of this particular machine were corroborated in the course of an independent evaluation by the Clean Washington Center, Technology Brief Evaluation of Small Scale PCR Reprocessing Equipment, June (4) We assumed capital costs of $100,000 to $200,000 for a used 700. to 800-ton press and $4O,ooO for a simple mold. Building costs were estimated at $50,000 for 1,000 square feet. Capital was annualized over 10 years for equipment and 30 years for plant, both eaming a pretax retum of 20 percent. Variable labor expenses were booked at $12 per hour for a mold operator, and variable energy costs at $2 per hour. Fixed maintenance costs assumed $200 per month for a part-time trained technician and $240 per month for one of the MRF supervisors with technical skills and $200 per month for spare parts. Cycle time was considered to be 90 seconds. These lower-end molding costs were considered appropriate because the product was a nonprecision application. Please keep in mind that operating costs during startup will be substantially higher. (5) Ameritan Plastics Council, How to Develop a Viable Post-Conwner Plqtics Handling Business, 1993, p.70. (6) In terms of physical plant, there should be an additional 1,000 to 2,000 square feet: In terms of human resources, care is necessary to insure that the skills are there to make a single-line molding operation feasible. For example, a one-press operation cannot support a full-time technician. Someone with those skills who is available on a part-time basis is needed. Also, one of the MRF managers should be technically proticient enough to leam how to tweak the press when problems crep up. To the extent that the product is a precision application and/or that the post-consumer stock is highly contaminated, greater technical resources will have to be obtained.