SCRAP PROCESSING

AMG processes more than 1,000,000 tons of scrap per year at its 12 facilities in the United States and United Kingdom. AMG collects industrial scrap and obsolete scrap, processes it into reusable forms and supplies the recycled metals to its customers, including electric arc furnace and integrated steel mills, foundries and secondary smelters.  AMG handles all major scrap grades, and its processed ferrous products include bundled, shredded and sheared scrap metal, in addition to other purchased scrap metal, such as turnings and cast and broken furnace iron.

AMG takes particular pride in devising solutions to efficiently recycle lesser grades of scrap by developing new processing technologies and finding new uses for such scrap.  At its St. Paul, Minn. plant, for example, AMG has a long-term contract with several Minnesota counties to process municipal waste.  Through an AMG-designed process, the waste is shredded and magnetically sorted to recover the ferrous content and remove any paper, wood, plastic and other non-ferrous materials.  The non-metallic material is then delivered to refuse-derived fuel processing facilities, also known as waste-to-energy plants, where it is dehydrated and compacted into pellets, which can then be burned as fuel substitutes.

In addition to these baling, shredding and shearing operations, AMG also produces a number of specialty products that cater to the particular needs of its customers, including detinned steel bundles, tin ingots, precipitation iron and shredded used cans.

DETINNED STEEL BUNDLES

AMG is the world’s largest detinner of tin-plate steel scrap.  AMG buys scrap generated by can companies and other users of tin-plate steel and, through chemical and electrolytic processes, separates the tin content from the steel at its detinning facilities in Baltimore, Md., Llanelli, U.K. and Hartlepool, U.K.  After the tin is removed, the detinned steel is baled and sold to steel mills.  AMG thus transforms low-grade scrap — as tin is a contaminant in the steel-making process if introduced in significant quantities — into a highly prized known-analysis product that can be freely substituted for No. 1 bundles.

TIN INGOTS

Once separated from the steel content through AMG’s detinning process, the recovered tin is refined to 99.98% purity — the purest commercial tin available in the world.  The resulting tin ingots are sold to tin mills and other users of tin, and any resulting tin dross is sold to secondary smelters, who are able to further refine the material.

PRECIPITATION IRON

AMG is the No. 1 producer of precipitation iron for the copper mining industry.  When introduced to acid-soluble copper, the precipitation iron and copper undergo an ion exchange that enables miners to recover the copper content from the solution.

USED CANS

AMG is the leading processor of post-consumer cans in the United States and United Kingdom.  AMG purchases used cans from waste disposal companies and municipal recycling programs, removes any residual waste from the cans and shreds the cans into nugget-sized pieces using AMG’s patented Cutler shredder.  At AMG’s Llanelli plant, the residual waste is further refined to recover the aluminum content.