Car-body recycling to begin next year

Press, 8 November 1980, Page 12

Car-body recycling to begin next year

The first recycling of car bodies in New Zealand is expected to start in the middle of next year, boosting the country’s ability to be self-sufficient in meeting its scrap steel needs. Auckland-based Pacific Metal Industries. Ltd, has ordered from the United States plant worth about $3 million for flattening for of car bodies and shredding them into fist-sized chunks of Scrap metal.

The company’s assistant manager, Mr J. Pitt-Stan-ley, said a mobile.'flattening unit, which would be moved all over New Zealand, was expected to begin work . early ' next year and a shredding machine at Otahuhui by the middle of the year.

Stockpiling of car bodies for flattening and railing to Otahuhu has begun in Dunedin and Invercargill and Pacific Metals will talk to Christchurch local authorities about similiar activity.

Car body recycling would add about 30,000 tonnes of scrap metal to that already going into the company’s mill annually and retrieve thousands of bodies otherwise dumped each year.

Mr Pitt-Stanley said the shredder 1 could handle most parts of a car, including the engine block, and the steel produced was of good quality. Local bodies controlling dumps, private tin owners, and motor vehicle wreckers would be the source of car bodies which Pacific Metals would buy. Local bodies in Dunedin and Invercargill had seen the advantages of the scheme and had stockpiled alreadv about 8000 car bodies, Mr Pitt-Stanley said.

However, Christchurch' had been lagging. One estimate has put the number of car bodies disposed of on dumps in Christchurch each week at branch manager, Mr B. C. 70. Pacific Metals’ local Spratt, said he would discuss stockpiling in the next few weeks with the three local bodies in Christchurch owning dumps', and with private tin owners and car wreckers and dealers.

Mr Pitt-Stanley said the scheme would save the cost of hurving car bodies on landfills where thev later rusted away and caused subsidence.

Transnort. costs will be a big factor in the economics of the scheme. In Australia, similiar recycling schemes did not haul car bodies, even when flattened, more than 150 miles, . Mr Pitt-Stanley said.

Rail space would be no problem: The company would provide a flow of freight from the South Island to the North Island,

which would help the He could not foresee the collection of car bodies for flattening being restricted to the North Island, because of high transport costs. A lifting of the present ban on the export of scrap metal would undermine the viability of the shredder, he said. The Government recently re-affirmed the ban but Mr Pitt-Stan-ley was surprised its need had even been brought into question. ? Exports would earn New Zealand only about $1 million annually but in 'return:- it would have to spend “countless millions’’ importing the raw materials to meet steel production demand.

In addition, Mr PittStanley said, Pacific Metals' offered a constant price to . suppliers while export sales would be subject to wild fluctuations. Recycling was the best way to meet steel requirements, he said. From time

to time, scrap metal had to be imported. 4 The demand for steel from the two New Zealand mills, Pacific Metals and New Zealand Steel, was expected to rise from about 140,000 tonnes annually to 200,000 tonnes in the next five years, Mr Pitt-Stanley said. “We will be pretty hard pressed to meet that,” he said. Mr Pitt-Stanley said car bodies would eventually make up about 23 per cent of the scrap metal being used in his company’s mill. The shredder could handle between 25 and 30 tonnes an hour. For health reasons and cleanliness, he said, oil would have to be drained from engines and petrol tanks punctured before car bodies were flattened.

Once shredded, the scrap would be sorted using a magnet to abstract non-ferrous metals. Pacific Metals produced mainly reinforcing steel and light structural steel,