Chicago-based auto components recycler anticipates “improving revenue trends” in 2021.

Chicago-based LKQ Corp., an auto dismantler and components provider with locations in North America, Europe and Taiwan, has reported fourth quarter and full year 2020 results showing a 7 percent decrease in revenue but an 18.1 percent rise in net income.

The company’s 2020 revenue of $11.6 billion was down 7 percent from the $12.5 billion in sales in 2019, yet its net income for 2020 of $639 million represented an 18.1 percent increase compared with the $541 million earned in 2019.

The company says the favorable results “reflect continued improvement in operational and balance sheet productivity and further debt reduction” despite the interruption to revenue streams tied to “mobility restrictions” arising from COVID-19.

“Despite the headwinds we faced throughout 2020, we were able to execute on our key operating initiatives of pursuing profitable revenue, enhanced margins and free cash flow generation,” says Dominick Zarcone, LKQ’s president and CEO. “Additionally, the cost reductions our teams implemented in 2020 to confront the pandemic’s impact on demand are lessons that we will apply to our operations in 2021 and beyond.”

Adds Zarcone, “As we look to the year ahead, I am confident that the strength of our operations, balance sheet and free cash flow all position LKQ for solid growth and value creation for our stakeholders.”

Comments Varun Laroyia, LKQ’s chief financial officer, “While the recovery in miles traveled slowed in the fourth quarter, we anticipate a gradual recovery in the second half of the year as vaccination efforts take hold. Improving revenue trends combined with our improving cost structure should drive increased profitability relative to 2020 and contribute to another strong year of cash generation.”

Securities analyst Michael E. Hoffman of Baltimore-based Stifel Financial Corp. looks favorably on the results, writing, “We reiterate our ‘buy’ rating on diversified industrial top pick LKQ Corp. Despite macro factors that could be disruptive, LKQ beat on sales, EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] and FCF [free cash flow], with slightly less organic sales growth in U.S. parts and services but better organic sales growth in EU parts and service.”

U.S.-based equipment company says German technology can help purify recycled-content PET flakes.

North Carolina-based eFactor3 says air classifiers, such as the Westeria AirLift it distributes in the United States, are a crucial piece of equipment when it comes to the type of precision sorting necessary in some plastic recycling applications. One such application is in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle recycling, “in which the valuable PET fraction can efficiently and thoroughly be separated from lightweight contaminants such as PE films or paper labels” using the AirLift.

The Germany-made Westeria Airlift is capable of sorting fractions made up of components that differ in specific weight, according to eFactor3. The company says the AirLift has proven its worth in Germany, where that nation’s Packaging Act specifies a material recycling rate of 58.5 percent for plastics packaging, a rate that is set to rise to 63 percent starting next year.

The regulations disregard economic factors such as the oversupply of plastic scrap and the current reduced prices for virgin plastics, says the equipment company. “This means the requirements on the quality and purity of the input available for recycling are increasing,” states eFactor3. “If these greater quantities of recycled material are to be obtained from post-consumer [scrap], greater attention has to be paid” to the sorting stages ahead of reprocessing and compounding, adds the company.

Conventional over-conveyor extractors (or air classifiers) are well suited to separating different weight fractions in mixed material streams, says eFactor3. The company adds, however, that they cannot always “cope when it comes to differentiating presorted or similar lightweight components, which is why the Westeria AirLift plays a key role. The Airlift can replace conventional air classifiers in existing installations, where it can then separate plastic film from paper or different plastics from one another.”

The AirLift system consists of three components: the SpeedCon high-speed conveyor belt; the AirLift unit itself; and an AirWheel downstream to assist with output.

AirLift units can be configured in widths from between 1,000 millimeters (mm) to 3,500 mm (3 feet, 3 inches to 11 feet, 5 inches). Maximum ouput capacity, according to eFactor3, is 5.6 metric tons per hour.

“Levels of purity in excess of 95 percent are achievable depending on the input material,” states eFactor3. “For instance, an analysis of AirLift systems installed in the mixed plastics infeed to a near infrared (NIR) sorter revealed that, for a working width of 2,800 mm (9 feet, 2 inches), more than 90 percent of the desired film fraction [had been] reliably separated.”

Thus, says the equipment company, the system “considerably reduces disposal costs and increases recycling cost efficiency. Eliminating the film from mixed plastics facilitates NIR sorting and distinctly improves the sorting result.”

For existing plant operators, eFactor3 says the complete three-part AirLift system can be used as a sub-component of a more comprehensive sorting installation. “Its design also allows it to be straightforwardly retrofitted, if necessary,” says the firm.

Kristi Hansen is a design engineer with 18 years’ experience in structural fiber and plastics.

The Amherst, New Hampshire-based recyclability testing and design firm, Plastics Forming Enterprises (PFE), has announced that Kristi Hansen has assumed the role of president.  PFE is working with some of the largest brands in the world to achieve packaging circularity goals.  

Established in 1984 by Louis Tacito, PFE has played an instrumental role in helping to develop quality standards for recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) at the recycling industry’s earliest stages, as well as consulting on the construction of some of the first plastics recycling facilities.  PFE’s growth over the years has paralleled the maturation of the plastics recycling industry, increasing the range of material testing and consultation services to include the many resins used in rigid and flexible packaging.

Hansen brings the experience and vision that will enable PFE to continue to evolve with the rapidly changing packaging industry, the company says.  As a design engineer with a degree from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and 18 years of engineering experience in the structural fiber and plastics industries, Hansen brings a great deal of technical knowledge to her new leadership role.  Her professional accomplishments include installing, starting up and training the commercial quality-control laboratories for three food-grade PET recycling facilities and also has assisted Tacito in the full facility design, development and qualification for several major, best-in-class Food and Drug Administration-grade PET plants throughout the world.

“Kristi brings unparalleled experience to the organization, which uniquely qualifies her to oversee and manage the many business functions at PFE,” Tacito, CEO of PFE, says.  “Her roles have allowed her to work closely with the clientele to better understand the recycling community and the challenges that material selection and product design have on the recycle stream quality.”

Among Hansen’s goals for the organization are for PFE to continue to lead in mechanical testing and design consultation but also to support the industry as it moves to address the emerging opportunities in chemical recycling, mitigating ocean plastics and improving the image of plastics. 

“This is an unprecedented and exciting time in the plastics industry,” Hansen says. “PFE has been a force in helping the recycling industry grow and become mainstream in manufacturing. I look forward to leading this organization as it meets the industry’s new challenges in achieving circularity goals.”

The University of Birmingham is starting a rare earth magnet recycling project to find a source of rare earth magnets for Bentley Motors’ electric and hybrid vehicles.

U.K.’s University of Birmingham has announced a three-year research project with London-based Bentley Motors to deliver a sustainable source of rare earth magnets for electric and hybrid vehicles for the luxury car brand. The 2.6 million pound (or about $3.6 million) rare earth recycling for electric machines (RaRE) project is funded by the U.K.’s Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, the nation’s innovation agency. According to a news release from the university, the project involves six partners who will work together to establish the first end-to-end supply chain of recycled rare earth magnets in the UK.

The university reports that rare earth magnets are found in almost every appliance that uses electricity to generate motion, and in the last 30 years, their use has increased. Although they are increasingly important in the transition to a low-carbon economy, the University of Birmingham reports that fewer than 1 percent of these magnets are recycled.

The project will build on a technology developed by University of Birmingham Professor Allan Walton and Professor Emeritus Rex Harris of the school’s Magnetic Materials Group, a research group focused on processing and recycling permanent rare earth magnetic materials. The technology, called Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap (HPMS), extracts rare earth metals from scrap electronics by breaking them into a powder that is easily separated from remaining components.

The technology was patented by the University of Birmingham Enterprise and then licensed to HyProMag Ltd., a company that was set up by the school’s researchers. HyProMag has since received investment from Mkango Resources, which will be funding HyProMag’s contribution to the RaRE project, according to the University of Birmingham.

The project will develop a process to recycle magnets extracted from computer hard drives to make rare earth magnets for use in bespoke ancillary motors and will involve HyProMag scaling up the recycling techniques developed at the University of Birmingham. The university says it will also provide cast alloys, which HyProMag will blend with secondary materials in order to produce the “sintered” magnets, which are formed by press moulding the metal powders.

“RaRE is an exciting project and a fantastic opportunity,” says Nick Mann, operations general manager at HyProMag. “HyProMag’s recycling technologies allow us to produce [Neodymium or NdFeB] magnets with a much lower embedded carbon cost than using virgin supply and with independence from Chinese supply and we are working closely with our major shareholder Mkango Resources to further grow the business. We are proud to be working with established, innovative and renowned companies in the RaRE project with whom we can showcase the technologies of the RaRE project as a whole—recycled magnets being used for cutting edge products in a prestige application.”

In addition to the university, Bentley and HyProMag, other partners in the RaRE project include Unipart Powertrain Applications Ltd., which will lead the development of manufacturing scale-up routes to ensure facilities and processes defined are suitable for volume automotive manufacture; Advanced Electric Machines Research Ltd., which is leading on the design and development of the motors; and Intelligent Lifecycle Solutions Ltd., which will preprocess computer hard disk drives to remove rare earth magnet-containing components from the materials, which will be shipped to HyProMag for recycling.

Walker Magnetics has been providing custom and standard magnetic products for 125 years.

Boyne City, Michigan-based Industrial Magnetics Inc. has acquired substantially all of the assets of Walker Magnetics Group Inc., which was founded in 1896 in Worcester, Massachusetts.

According to a news release from Industrial Magnetics, Walker Magnetics is North America’s “oldest industrial magnet manufacturer.” The company was founded upon the invention of the electromagnetic chuck by Oakley S. Walker and has since grown into a provider of custom and standard magnetic products for work-holding, lifting, material handling, scrap magnets and separation applications. Over its 125-year history, Industrial Magnetics reports that a diverse range of industries have come to recognize Walker Magnetics products’ reliability across a broad spectrum of unique and general manufacturing applications.

“The acquisition of Walker Magnetics marks Industrial Magnetics’ next step in expanding our permanent, electromagnetic and electro-permanent magnetic technology and systems for industrial applications,” says Dennis O’Leary, Industrial Magnetics’ chief business development officer. “It also broadens our industry-best roster of lift magnets and establishes Industrial Magnetics as a leader in the work-holding segment with a complete lineup of permanent, electromagnetic and electro-permanent magnetic chucks.

He continues, “With strong brand recognition and highly complementary products, we are excited about the opportunities to grow both businesses while maintaining our industry-best lead time, reliability and quality. Industrial Magnetics intends to be a thoughtful steward to the Walker Magnetics legacy, history and brand with continued investment in its long-term growth.”

Industrial Magnetics was founded in 1961 and provides permanent and electromagnetic solutions.