Concerned about quality: speakers at the paper recycling conference & trade show voiced concerns about recovered fiber quality

Recycling Today, August, 2005 by Deanne Toto

This year's Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show, held June 26-28 in Atlanta, attracted roughly 550 attendees who heard presentations from some of the industry's top executives.

Reflecting the growing importance of the show for paper recyclers, the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) and the Paper Stock Industries Chapter of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. held meetings during the three-day program.

The hallmark of the annual Paper Recycling Conference & Exposition has been highly interesting and informative educational sessions. Many speakers this year addressed the effect of Chinas demand on the market and quality issues related to single-stream collection programs and the document destruction industry.

AS THE WORLD TURNS. Chinas demand for recovered fiber is among the top trends driving the global paper market, according to speakers on the keynote panel.

According to Bill Moore of Moore & Associates, who moderated the session titled "As the World Turns: Fiber Flow Dynamics," Asia (particularly China) is expected to lead the world in investment in additional recycling capacity through 2007, while North America is expected to lose capacity during the same time period.

Old corrugated containers and old newspapers (OCC and ONP)--and to some extent mixed paper--are the grades getting the most attention on the world stage. Demand in North America for OCC is declining because goods that require packaging aren't being manufactured in that region, said Moore.

Panelist Ron Thiry of SCA North America commented that tighter supply, lower quality, consolidation among suppliers and consumers and the emergence of the document destruction industry will be key domestic factors that will continue to affect the global paper market in the near future.

Ming Chung Liu of Nine Dragons Paper Industries Co. echoed the rest of the panel's opinion on China--that it will continue to be the largest importer of recovered paper through 2007 and that it will keep most of its own fiber in domestic mills.

Liu also mentioned Japan's emergence as a "new player" in the world market as an exporter of recovered paper.

Panelists from the document destruction industry touched on paper consumers' quality concerns during a session at the conference, stressing that their priorities lie first and foremost with the secure destruction of information; the market value of the shredded paper ranks a distant second.

TORN TO SHREDS. Nick Wildrick, co-founder of Shred First LLC, Spartanburg, S.C., urged those entering the secure document destruction field to think first of the value of the shredding service being offered and not of the tons of paper that can be recovered. "Everything we sell is about security," he said.

Wildrick presented a business model based on a "per container" charge that may seem low-yielding taken alone (both in dollars and in pounds of paper), but when multiplied by 1,000 bins presents a scenario for $900,000 in revenue before the value of the shredded scrap paper is even considered.

Chris Ockenfels, manager of the Document Destruction and Recycling Services (DDRS) subsidiary of City Carton Co., Iowa City, Iowa, also noted that the commodity-based model of the recycling industry does not always align with the service and security-based model of the document destruction industry.

Confidential shredders have the additional responsibilities of facility security, employee background checking and chain of custody agreements for the documents they handle, Ockenfels noted.

Increasingly, shredding firms have to meet shredding particle size specifications that may even negatively affect the value of their scrap paper product. For security reasons they must often shred entire files--folders, paper clips and plastic report covers included--which can also negatively impact the value of their scrap paper.

As far as complaints from paper mills because of these practices and the potential downgrading of such material, Wildrick said flatly, "I don't care." He noted that the first duty of a shredding firm is the protection and destruction of the information.

Robert Johnson, executive director of the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), Phoenix, Ariz., urged recyclers who also offer shredding services to consider using NAID as a resource to help ensure that they follow best industry practices and stay in touch with key legislative issues affecting document destruction firms.

The growing effect of the document destruction industry was also addressed in a session titled "Solving the Procurement Puzzle."

PROCUREMENT PROVES PUZZLING.

Speakers on the procurement panel offered their thoughts on the influence of the export market, contract buying, inventory strategies, logistics, consumption volatility and quality issues.

Ed Tucciarone of Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. moderated the session, which included presentations by Andrew Bell of Sonoco, Tom Cihlar of Caraustar Recovered Fiber Group, Colin Johnston of Abitibi-Consolidated and Marc Forman of Georgia-Pacific/ Harmon Associates.