The pulp and paper manufacturer agreed to sell the mill when it acquired Domtar in November of last year.

The Paper Excellence Group, a manufacturer of pulp and specialty, printing, writing and packaging papers that is based in Richmond, British Columbia, has announced its subsidiary, Fort Hill, South Carolina-based Domtar Inc., has entered into an agreement with an affiliate of Kruger Specialty Papers Holding LP to sell its Kamloops pulp mill.

Domtar and Paper Excellence did not disclose the amount of the agreement, but the transaction is expected to close by the end of the second quarter of this year.

Domtar's Kamloop's mill, located in Kamloops, British Columbia, uses softwood fiber from third-party sawmills in the region to produce high-quality northern bleached softwood kraft pulp and unbleached softwood kraft for customers in North America, China and Southeast Asia, according to the company. The mill has one fiber line and an annual pulp production capacity of 408,000 metric tons.

Built in 1965, Domtar says the Kamloops mill produces pulp for a diverse range of products, including personal hygiene, building siding, dishware and more.

When Paper Excellence acquired Domtar in November 2021 and entered into a consent agreement with Canada's commissioner of competition, it agreed to sell the Kamloops mill to resolve the commissioner's concerns about the merger's implications on the purchase of wood fiber from the Thompson-Okanagan region in British Columbia.

Domtar currently is in the process of converting a printing and writing mill in Kingsport, Tennessee, into a containerboard mill, which will produce 600,000 tons per year of recycled-content linerboard and medium while consuming approximately 700,000 tons of recovered fiber per year. The project is expected to be completed by the first quarter of next year.

The robotic picker, developed in collaboration with Fanuc, can sort materials like PET, HDPE, PE, PP, aluminum and paper at 55 picks per minute.

Recycleye, a waste and recycling technology based in London, has announced it will showcase its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robotic pickers at IFAT 2022 in Munich. The company says the equipment, called Recycleye Robotics, can identify and sort materials faster than humans.  

In response to the high operating expenditures associated with manual picking in material recovery facilities, Recycleye developed an AI-powered computer vision system, called Recycleye Vision, which identifies every item on a waste stream using a low-cost camera and machine learning algorithms. This system is integrated with the robot, a picker developed in partnership with Japan-based manufacturer Fanuc, which automates the physical task of separating waste items into pure material streams.   

The machine has several applications, including negative sorting. It can sort materials like polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polyethylene/polypropylene (PE/PP), aluminum and paper.  

The company says it installed the first wave of waste-sorting robots of their kind in material recovery facilities in the UK, France and Italy. These installations have achieved up to 55 successful picks per minute, less than 1 percent contamination and an increase in output volume of the target material by 12 percent at some sites.   

The company says through this technology, the global waste sorting processes could sort to higher granularities with more efficiency, extracting things like food-grade PET from residual lines. This would lower the cost of waste sorting and increase profit margins on resale bales due to the higher purity of the material.  

“By rendering recycling a more economically attractive proposition, our technology will prevent more of Europe’s valuable recyclable materials being lost to landfills, proving that waste doesn’t exist, only materials in the wrong place,” Recycleye CEO Victor DeWulf says.  

Recycleye is exhibiting at IFAT 2022 in Munich from May 30 to June 3 and will be in the startup area in Hall B4 on Stand 34. 

The Pennsylvania company says a liquidation sales event has been scheduled for May 23-25.

Deacon Equipment Co. (DEC), a forestry, sawmill and recycling equipment dealer based in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, has announced it’s closing its doors after more than 27 years in business. Owners Walt and Wendy Deacon gave no firm closing date, but it is expected the shop will close by Oct. 31.  

"We attribute our success to the hard work and talents of our sales, parts, service, and support staff and a very loyal customer base," Wendy Deacon says.   

Deacon primarily sells grinding and shearing equipment  from Morbark, however it also sells equipment like skid steers from Fecon, Boxer and Rayco.   

The company says Walt Deacon's affiliation with Morbark began in 1981 when he held management positions at the company's headquarters in Winn, Michigan. His responsibilities continued to grow with the company, and in 1986 Walt became the president of a new subsidiary company, Morbark Pennsylvania Inc. After Morbark Pennsylvania closed in 1995, Walt started DEC, selling Morbark parts. By 1997, DEC became a full Morbark industrial equipment dealer and added the tree care line in 2005.   

"We will begin the liquidation process immediately so my wife and I can spend more time with our six children and eight grandchildren while also taking time for travel," Deacon says.   

The company announced that it has scheduled a sales event for May 23-25, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at its Bloomsburg facility located at 22 Wedgetown Road. The sale will feature a 10 percent discount on all nonwear parts, additional discounts on many parts, and free apparel gifts for all attendees while supplies last. All sales will be final and must be paid for at purchase. 

The site will be able to process up to 10,000 metric tons of manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries per year.

Li-Cycle Holdings Corp., with headquarters in Toronto, has begun commercial operations in Gilbert, Arizona. This site is the company’s third spoke facility, joining plants in Kingston, Ontario, and Rochester, New York. However, the Arizona site is the first to use proprietary technology that processes full electric vehicle, or EV, battery packs without dismantling them manually, making recycling of those battery packs safer, sustainable and more labor efficient, the company says.

The facility is strategically located near Li-Cycle’s existing battery and manufacturing scrap supply network in the southwestern U.S. to optimize logistics and other efficiencies for recycling services. Additionally, Arizona presents a significant opportunity for lithium-ion battery recycling in light of the emerging EV supply chain in the region, as well as its proximity to large markets such as California, which are expected to produce an increasing supply of end-of-life batteries available for recycling from EVs, energy storage projects and consumer electronics, the company says.

The primary output of the Arizona spoke is black mass, consisting of a number of critical metals, including lithium, cobalt and nickel, which Li-Cycle says it will convert into battery-grade materials at its first North American hub, which is under construction in Rochester, New York. Li-Cycle says it expects that the Hub will be able to process 35,000 metric tons of black mass annually, with commissioning targeted for 2023.

“The launch of Li-Cycle’s innovative battery recycling facility bolsters Arizona’s already robust EV supply chain and sends a signal that Arizona is the place to be for electric batteries,” says Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. “Sustainable industries have found a home in Arizona, and few companies represent the innovation and possibilities that brings like Li-Cycle. We are proud to see Li-Cycle’s facility up and operational.”

“We are excited Li-Cycle’s innovative battery recycling facility has commenced operations,” says Sandra Watson, President and CEO of the Arizona Commerce Authority. “Li-Cycle’s Arizona Spoke will increase EV battery recycling capabilities, strengthening Arizona’s battery and electric vehicle supply chains while creating quality jobs in the community.”

“We are pleased to announce that our Arizona spoke is operational,” says Richard Storrie, regional president, Americas, of Li-Cycle. “This new state-of-the-art facility enhances our ability to serve the recycling needs of our customers while significantly increasing our operational recycling capacity. We’re also creating an additional domestic source of critical metals to be transformed and supply lithium-ion battery production.”

Li-Cycle held a grand opening event earlier this month at the 140,000-square-foot facility, where the company was joined by its customers, local government officials and others connected to the Gilbert community and surrounding area

Li-Cycle’s Alabama spoke, which is of the same design as the Arizona site, is scheduled to be operational in the third quarter of the company’s 2022 fiscal year. When the Arizona and Alabama spokes are operational, Li-Cycle will have a total processing capacity of 30,000 metric tons annually. By the end of 2023, the company says it expects to have a total of 65,000 metric tons of lithium-ion battery processing capacity per year across its spokes in North America and Europe.    

Dust suppression technology provider BossTek says new model can work in multiple wind conditions.

BossTek, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois, says its new DustBoss DB-60 Surge model has been developed in response to the needs of customers in areas with variable winds.

The company describes the DB-60 Surge atomized mist machine as “a powerful cannon that is designed to fight dust with maximum efficiency” using water propelled at high velocity from a center nozzle “combined with the industry-proven fan and misting ring system.”

“Our customers operate in very different circumstances; some with high-reach excavators, some in open areas without natural barriers, while others are located in narrow corridors where wind velocity is amplified,” says BossTek dust control specialist Mike Lewis. “What these customers have in common is the difficulty in controlling fine atomized mist during blustery conditions. So, we worked with our industry partners, listened to their feedback and engineered our most versatile and innovative machine to date.”

Lewis says one of the initial drivers behind the new design was a need in the demolition industry. “Several customers described their challenges in suppressing dust during demolition of high-rise structures,” he says. “Some of them use attachments that can be mounted on a high-lift boom, but that can bring its own complications. When we started working on a solution, we realized this technology would also deliver benefits to a wide range of applications in which variable wind conditions can be a problem, such as port facilities, material processing operations and large outdoor storage facilities.”

The pressurized spray resists wind shear and even uses the force of the wind to further fragment and carry the droplets, enhancing its dust suppression capabilities, the machinery maker says. The outcome is achieved without the need for the high-volume water output that can be associated with a hydrant-dependent hose or industrial sprinkler system, the firm adds.

The DB-60 Surge offers three remote-controlled stages and what BossTek calls “precision oscillation for optimum command over water volume and coverage area.” The device uses “high-powered jets that surge through the wind” for more than 250 feet (76.2 meters) to “suppress both surface and airborne dust,” BossTek says.

The first stage of the three-stage system, adjusted by a hand-held remote, is “highly effective on moderate days for airborne and surface coverage,” BossTek says. For windy days, Stage 2 features a pressurized stream delivered by the central nozzle. On high wind days, operators can use the fan, misting ring and center nozzle for maximum coverage as Stage 3.

BossTek describes the DB-60 Surge as mounted on a heavy-duty roadworthy trailer for towing at highway speeds with a standard ball hitch, so it can be placed by a pickup truck, skid steer or lift truck.

“After the initial setup, the DB-60 Surge requires no labor to operate,” the company says. The remote control has a 1,000-foot (305-meter) range, so operators of high-reach excavators or front loaders can send commands the machine without leaving their cabs.

“DustBoss is known for its rugged quality and long equipment life, often described as one of the most reliable and low-maintenance pieces of equipment on any job site,” Lewis says. “Our three-year or 3,000-hour warranty is evidence of our confidence in the products. The DB-60 Surge is designed with that same philosophy and is built to last.”