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        <title>Metals - Recycling Product News</title>
        <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/topic/Metals-22</link>
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            <title><![CDATA[The new realities of load theft]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44942/the-new-realities-of-load-theft</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44942/the-new-realities-of-load-theft</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:35:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[The truck arrives on time. The paperwork appears legitimate. The driver knows which shipment to collect. The truck number matches the dispatch information, and the load leaves the yard without raising suspicion. Hours later, the customer calls. The shipment never arrived.
For recyclers today, load theft often begins with convincing fraud. Criminals are posing as legitimate carriers, using falsified insurance certificates and dispatch information to collect high-value loads before disappearing without a trace.
According to Ryan Burns, Practice Leader with Cowan Insurance Group, organized cargo fraud is reshaping load theft risks for recyclers. Rising commodity values and evolving schemes are creating new challenges for recyclers moving high-value shipments.
Protecting outbound loads requires more than securing the yard. Load theft prevention requires strong internal procedures, thorough verification, and consistent communication from the moment a shipment is scheduled until it reaches its destination.
How load theft exploits the shipping process
For decades, recyclers have focused much of their security efforts on preventing theft from within the yard. Fencing, controlled access, lighting, and surveillance all remain important, but Burns says many of today's losses occur after a shipment has been authorized to leave.
Rather than forcing their way into a facility, organized criminal groups are finding ways to enter the shipping process before a truck ever reaches the yard.
"Load theft is probably the fastest-growing risk right now for recyclers," says Burns. "The schemes are becoming more sophisticated. The carriers, they're showing up . . . with fake certificates of insurance. There's fake dispatch that's being set up. There's load diversion tactics."
When the truck arrives, nothing appears unusual, and the&nbsp;shipment is loaded and released. Only later does the recycler, the legitimate carrier, or the customer discover that the assigned truck never arrived. Because the transaction appears legitimate until after the shipment has left the yard, these incidents can be difficult to detect before it's too late. For Burns, that shift changes how recyclers need to think about security.
Why scrap metal is an attractive target
Metal has always been valuable, but several factors make recycled commodities particularly attractive to thieves.
First, values have climbed significantly.
"Copper last year around this time was trading at three dollars, four dollars a pound, and now it's over seven," says Burns. A single outbound load of non-ferrous material can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in value.
Second, scrap is inherently difficult to trace. Unlike finished products, recycled metals don't carry serial numbers or unique identifiers. Once a shipment changes hands, is combined with other material, or is exported, recovering it becomes extremely difficult.
"You can buy it in Calgary and go and sell it in Halifax, and it's very, very hard to trace," Burns explains.
Finally, every shipment passes through multiple hand-offs. Material moves from recycler to carrier, from carrier to processor, and sometimes through freight brokers or transfer facilities along the way. Each transition presents another opportunity for fraud if proper controls are not in place. For Burns, those realities make outbound shipments one of the industry's most vulnerable points.
Standardize shipping procedures to prevent load theft
According to Burns, one of the most effective ways to reduce load theft has little to do with technology or physical security. It starts with establishing consistent procedures that every employee follows, every time.
In many recycling operations, shipping procedures are set in stone. Veteran dispatchers and scale operators know their regular carriers, recognize familiar drivers, and can often spot something that doesn't seem right. But Burns says relying on individual experience leaves gaps, particularly as companies grow, staff change, or new employees take on shipping responsibilities. Instead, verification should be built into the process itself.
Documented procedures create consistency. They ensure that every shipment is handled the same way regardless of who is working that day, reducing the likelihood that an unusual request or convincing story will bypass normal safeguards.
Burns also encourages recyclers to regularly review those procedures with employees. Criminal tactics continue to evolve, and staff who understand what to watch for are more likely to recognize suspicious situations before a load leaves the yard. One way to improve security is by creating a process that verifies every shipment the same way.]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[Binder+Co's AI system makes advanced metal recycling more accessible]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44782/bindercos-ai-system-makes-advanced-metal-recycling-more-accessible</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44782/bindercos-ai-system-makes-advanced-metal-recycling-more-accessible</guid>
            <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Producing premium metal commodities has traditionally come at a premium cost. Consumers demand cleaner, more precisely sorted commodities, while recyclers face rising labour costs and tighter margins. Premium products can unlock higher prices, but achieving those specifications has traditionally required either labour-intensive hand sorting or costly sensor-based technologies.
Artificial intelligence is beginning to change that equation.
Rather than introducing entirely new ways to separate metals, AI-enhanced optical sorting is making many existing sorting applications more economical, allowing recyclers to recover more value from material streams without the investment traditionally associated with advanced sensor technologies.
One example of that shift is Binder+Co's CLARITY AI sorting system, which combines conventional optical sorting hardware with machine learning to recognize materials in ways that traditional colour-based optical sorting may miss.
"We're not presenting these new ways to sort materials," says Ferdinand Schoen, senior sales manager for Binder+Co USA. "It's that AI can do a lot of the sorting that's being done today, but do it better or cheaper than conventional sorting technologies."
How AI sees beyond colour
Traditional optical sorters identify materials primarily by colour. While effective for many applications, those systems can struggle when materials no longer appear exactly as expected.
A weathered piece of copper, for example, may appear brown, grey, oxidized, or coated rather than bright copper red. Human operators can still recognize it immediately, but conventional optical sorters often cannot. AI changes that by evaluating a much broader range of visual information.
"The AI sorter works with just an optical camera system that employs a neural network architecture to process and analyze complete image information in real time. It's basically an enhancement to a conventional optical sorter, enabling maximum performance through intelligent visual data interpretation," says Schoen.
Instead of focusing mainly on colour, the system analyzes characteristics such as shape, edges, surface texture, and other visual cues to build a more comprehensive understanding of each object passing beneath the camera.
Training AI for metal sorting
Teaching the system follows a process similar to training a person. Representative pieces of a specific material are presented to the system, allowing the AI to develop its own recognition model based on their shared visual characteristics.
"You have to present the machine with . . . at least a thousand pieces," says Schoen. "The more the better." While that may sound like a lengthy process, pre-sorted material can pass through the AI sorter in just a few minutes, after which the software processes the information on Binder+Co's server and creates a new or updated sorting program within a few hours.
Binder+Co currently favours site-specific training rather than relying entirely on centralized databases. According to Schoen, creating the training dataset using material from the customer's own operation consistently produces the most reliable results because every recycling stream has its own characteristics. While material libraries exist, programs are tailored to individual applications and retrained when operators determine conditions have changed significantly.
Making advanced AI metal sorting more accessible
The most significant impact of AI is not only improved sorting accuracy but improved accessibility.
Advanced technologies such as X-ray Transmission (XRT) and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) have enabled increasingly sophisticated metal separation for years. However, their cost has limited adoption primarily to larger recycling operations.
AI optical sorting offers an alternative for many applications. Schoen says that, for certain sorting tasks at comparable throughput, AI systems can often perform the same sorting tasks while requiring roughly one-third to one-half of the initial investment of comparable XRT or XRF systems. Since the systems rely on optical cameras rather than X-ray technology, he says that operating costs can decrease by eliminating X-ray components, reducing spare parts costs, and avoiding the additional requirements associated with X-ray safety standards. AI sorting can also run faster than conventional XRT/XRF sorting, further reducing operating costs. On a 2.1-metre-wide sorter, for example, Zorba can be run at over 20 tph.
This gives larger recyclers the capacity to do more with fewer machines and gives smaller companies the flexibility of quickly running different products and different programs. Instead of dedicating individual machines to one specific application, recyclers can switch between customized sorting programs as production requirements change. Used as a batch process, a single AI sorter can move between different sorting applications throughout the day, allowing facilities to recover a wider range of higher-value materials with one machine. That lower cost changes the economics for many recyclers.
"I think the real advantage of AI is that you can implement a very versatile system that can handle a number of applications that are a much lower investment cost compared to previously existing technologies," says Schoen.
For many mid-sized recyclers, that may represent the first practical opportunity to move beyond producing standard non-ferrous products and begin upgrading material into higher-value products.
"I think it will really be a door opener for many recyclers to do more with sorting," says Schoen. "It gives them a lot more opportunities."]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[Canada strengthens Criminal Code to combat copper theft]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44736/canada-strengthens-criminal-code-to-combat-copper-theft</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44736/canada-strengthens-criminal-code-to-combat-copper-theft</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:53:22 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Canada has strengthened its Criminal Code to crack down on copper theft, recognizing the growing threat the crime poses to critical infrastructure, public safety, and essential services.]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[TOMRA’s AUTOSORT now processes stainless steel and heavy metals]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44755/tomras-autosort-now-processes-stainless-steel-and-heavy-metals</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44755/tomras-autosort-now-processes-stainless-steel-and-heavy-metals</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:50:17 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[TOMRA Recycling is expanding the application range of AUTOSORT PULSE beyond aluminum alloy separation. The Dynamic LIBS-based sorting system can now be used on a wider range of material streams, including stainless steel, heavy metals, magnesium, and incinerator bottom ash (IBA).&nbsp;]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[Rio Tinto's $1.5B smelter to add 160,000 tonnes of low-carbon aluminum annually]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44684/rio-tintos-dollar15b-smelter-to-add-160000-tonnes-of-low-carbon-aluminum-annually</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44684/rio-tintos-dollar15b-smelter-to-add-160000-tonnes-of-low-carbon-aluminum-annually</guid>
            <pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:05:53 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Rio Tinto has marked a major milestone with its low-carbon aluminum smelting technology with the commissioning of a US$1.5 billion AP60 smelter expansion at Complexe Arvida in Quebec.]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[Key market trends and regulations affecting recycled steel in 2026 and beyond]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44668/key-market-trends-and-regulations-affecting-recycled-steel-in-2026-and-beyond</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44668/key-market-trends-and-regulations-affecting-recycled-steel-in-2026-and-beyond</guid>
            <pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:27:13 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[At BIR's Stainless Steel &amp; Special Alloys Committee in Gothenburg, Sweden, Chairman Joost van Kleef described the sector as "constantly adapting and always looking ahead." The need to adapt and keep an eye on the future was the thread that ran through the session's discussions, which included the changing global flows of material and the new EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).
An overview of current global trading conditions&nbsp;]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[Non-ferrous scrap export restrictions could harm global recyclers]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44663/non-ferrous-scrap-export-restrictions-could-harm-global-recyclers</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44663/non-ferrous-scrap-export-restrictions-could-harm-global-recyclers</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:53:19 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[At BIR's World Recycling Convention in Gothenburg, Sweden, the Non-Ferrous Metals Division held a session focused on the contentious issue of aluminum availability within Europe, moderated by Emmanuel Katrakis, director of Public and Regulatory Affairs at Galloo of France/Belgium.
The EU announces its end-of-life vehicle restriction]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[The key trends and pressures reshaping global ferrous markets in 2026 and beyond]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44646/the-key-trends-and-pressures-reshaping-global-ferrous-markets-in-2026-and-beyond</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44646/the-key-trends-and-pressures-reshaping-global-ferrous-markets-in-2026-and-beyond</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:32:31 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[At the BIR divisional meeting held on June 1, 2026, Shane Mellor, BIR Ferrous Division president, shared the results from sweeping developments reshaping steel flows. Mellor, with U.K.-based Mellor Metals Ltd., stated that the global ferrous markets "remain highly exposed to geopolitical instability, energy disruption, protectionism, freight volatility, and changing trade dynamics."&nbsp;]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[How shredder density determines your nonferrous yield]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44619/how-shredder-density-determines-your-nonferrous-yield</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44619/how-shredder-density-determines-your-nonferrous-yield</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 11:30:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Non-ferrous recovery is largely determined before material ever reaches downstream separation systems. It begins inside the shredder.
For shredder operators focused on maximizing yield, one of the most important upstream variables is whether the shredder is being kept full and run at the right density. According to Randy Brace, president of Riverside Engineering, maintaining full-box conditions is essential for efficient liberation of non-ferrous metals and for reducing oversized material.
Full-box shredding means keeping the machine consistently loaded so it processes a steady volume of scrap rather than cycling through partially filled conditions. When that consistency is maintained, the hammermill can do the work it was designed to do: break down material more effectively, improve liberation, and produce a more uniform shred.
When the box is not full, those results begin to slip.
"If you're not full-box shredding, you're losing a lot of efficiency," said Brace during a session at the most recent ReMA Safety and Operations Forum. "Your scrap is larger, so you're not getting the non-ferrous liberation that you really would be likely to get. You get more long bars out of the shredder when the shredder's not full-box shredding."
That matters because downstream recovery equipment can only separate what has been properly liberated upstream. If copper, aluminum, and other non-ferrous metals remain attached to ferrous pieces or trapped in larger fragments, they are less likely to be recovered cleanly. In that sense, poor box loading does more than reduce shredder efficiency. It directly limits non-ferrous yield.
Why density matters
Brace points to shred density as one of the clearest indicators of whether the shredder is operating in an optimal range.
"What I hear in the industry is 85 pounds per cubic foot," he said. "I would say you're liberating the majority of your non-ferrous metals as you push 85."
That benchmark has shifted over time. About 20 years ago, said Brace, many operators were aiming for 75 to 80 pounds per cubic foot to maximize throughput. Today, higher-density targets are more common as operators balance throughput with improved non-ferrous liberation and recovery.
The reason for that shift is straightforward. Lower-density shredding may allow material to move through the system faster, but it does not necessarily create the particle size and liberation needed for effective downstream recovery. If density is too low, operators are more likely to see larger shredded scrap, more unprocessed long pieces, and lower recovery of non-ferrous metals.
At the same time, Brace cautions that more density is not always better.
"At 90, you're starting [to] maybe put more casting costs and electrical costs, wear and tear on everything," he said.
In other words, the goal is not to drive density as high as possible. It is to stay in the range where liberation improves without pushing wear, power draw, and maintenance costs beyond the point of meaningful return.
What yards lose when the box is not full
The losses associated with underfeeding are not always&nbsp;obvious in the moment. A yard may still be producing tonnage, and operators may feel the shredder is running normally. But the downstream consequences can show up in recovery rates, electrical cost per ton, and casting consumption.
Brace ties several of those effects directly to incomplete box loading.
"Your electrical costs and your casting costs are higher also when you're not keeping the box full of scrap processing," he said.
This happens because a shredder running below optimal fill is doing less productive work with each cycle. Material exits the shredder in larger pieces, non-ferrous components are not as fully liberated, and the system can spend more time effectively grinding or reworking material instead of breaking it efficiently. That affects more than throughput. It affects the quality of the shred and the value that can be recovered from it.
One indicator of this is an increase in long bars. When they increase, it is often a sign that material is not being processed with enough consistency inside the box. That can create downstream handling problems while also highlighting missed liberation opportunities.
Measuring what the shredder is really doing
Because the effects of underfeeding can develop gradually, Brace emphasizes the importance of measurement. Density targets only matter if yards are tracking them consistently and connecting them to production results.
"If you're not tracking things and if you're not measuring things," said Brace, "the plant is deteriorating whether you recognize it or not."
Operators need to know what density they are achieving and how that relates to recovery, throughput, wear, and power consumption.
Brace also points to feed consistency as one of the biggest hidden drivers of shredder performance. "Material blockage at the feed rolls [and] gaps in the feed, those two are two of the biggest stealers of your production time," he said.
Automated tracking can help identify those gaps more clearly. By setting amp thresholds and tracking how long the shredder falls below a defined load level, yards can measure underfeeding instead of relying on operator impression.
In some systems, this is configured to trigger alerts when thresholds are exceeded.
"If you are below that threshold amp, you get an alert that says, hey, you need to identify a gap in feed material, or you've got a problem getting the material in at the feed roll," said Brace.
That kind of monitoring helps operators move beyond broad assumptions about performance. A yard may believe it is running efficiently because the shredder is active, but amp-based monitoring and density tracking can reveal whether the machine is actually being fed consistently enough to support proper liberation.
Upstream discipline, downstream results
For yards trying to improve non-ferrous recovery, the takeaway is practical. Downstream systems cannot recover metals that were never adequately liberated in the first place. That makes full-box shredding and density control critical upstream disciplines.
The current benchmark of about 85 pounds per cubic foot reflects that balance point: dense enough to improve liberation and non-ferrous yield, but not so dense that added wear and energy cost erase the gains. In an operating environment where recovery value matters as much as throughput, keeping the shredder full may be one of the simplest ways to improve what comes out the other end.
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of Recycling Product News.&nbsp;]]></description>
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            <title><![CDATA[What’s new in ferrous recovery]]></title>
            <link>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44621/whats-new-in-ferrous-recovery</link>
            <guid>https://www.recyclingproductnews.com/article/44621/whats-new-in-ferrous-recovery</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 18:00:31 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[The recycling industry has spent decades refining the technology used to pull ferrous material from mixed streams. Magnets, belts, and drums are well-understood tools, and most processing lines have some version of them. What's shifting is the quality standards that recovered ferrous material has to meet before it has value to the people buying it.
As steel mills tighten scrap specifications and plastics processors reject granules contaminated with metal particles, the tolerance for impurity in recovered ferrous is narrowing. What makes ferrous separation unusual is that the same material can be the target or the problem depending on the stream &mdash; wanted in one context, a contaminant in another. That shift is driving development in ferrous separation equipment: recycling systems are being designed not just to recover iron and steel, but to do so cleanly enough to meet the requirements of increasingly demanding end markets.
The response of equipment manufacturers has taken two main forms. One is to extract more purity from the magnetic separation stage itself, rather than accepting a lower-grade output and addressing contamination downstream. The other is to chain multiple separation technologies together, so that what one stage misses, the next catches. Both approaches are reflected in recent product developments.]]></description>
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