Celadon will build its North American headquarters and a recycled brown pulp manufacturing line near Savannah, Ga. | FellowNeko/Shutterstock

A $155 million facility to recycle OCC and mixed paper is coming to the Savannah, Ga. area, the governor’s office announced.

Celadon Development Corporation will build a North American headquarters and a state-of-the-art recycling and advanced manufacturing plant in Chatham County, according to a release.

In late 2019, investment firm Kamine Development Corporation Sustainable Infrastructure (KDC) and technology company Celadon announced that they planned to build two North American plants to recycle OCC and mixed paper into pulp sheets and reusable paper. At the time, the companies didn’t specify where the plants would be located.

The press release from Gov. Brian Kemp’s office described Celadon as a joint venture partnership of KDC and Nicollet Industries that was formed to build recycled brown pulp plants across North America. The president of Nicollet Industries, which is based in the Twin Cities area, is Tim Zosel, who is also CEO of Celadon.

The release stated the company will build its North American headquarters and a recycled brown pulp manufacturing line at a cost of over $155 million. That represents the first phase of a two-part project. In the second phase, Celadon will install a second production line at the plant.

The company has already opened a 65,000-square-foot dry processing plant for clean OCC, and it plans to also build a logistics operation in Chatham County.

The release indicates the output – 450,000 tons per year from each of the planned production lines – will be exported through the Port of Savannah. After the second phase is complete, exports could total 87,000 twenty-foot equivalent units a year, according to the release.

Separately, Celadon is planning a large plant in Tampa, Fla. Tampa leaders in September voted to have the city issue up to $350 million in bonds backed by the company to fund the recycling and pulp production facility, according to 10 Tampa Bay news. The article noted Celadon plans to export most of its products to Asia.

Earlier, in March 2021, the Tampa Bay Times reported that Port Tampa Bay leaders approved a deal to lease 37.7 acres to the company for at least 20 years. The article noted company officials indicated the plant would export as many as 20,000 containers of recycled paper products per year.

China’s National Sword imports restrictions campaign shut the door to bales of scrap paper and OCC, but the country is still allowing imports of pulp. To sidestep the ban, a number of companies have opened or are opening operations outside of China to process bales into pulp, and then they’re shipping that pulp to China’s cardboard factories. During the first three quarters of 2021, U.S. exporters shipped 332,000 short tons of pulp made from recycled fiber, up from 283,000 during the same period in 2020, 206,000 in 2019 and 34,000 in 2018.

This year, 83% of the U.S. recycled pulp exports have gone to China.

In January, California municipalities must begin meeting requirements of what some stakeholders are calling the most significant waste reduction legislation in decades.

Pratt, Georgia-Pacific, Graphic Packaging International and other paper mill owners have signed a statement affirming that they want plastic-coated paper cups in their feedstock.

The number of on-the-job deaths at MRFs increased slightly in 2020, but those killed in garbage and recyclables collection dropped notably.

KW Plastics this month started up a polypropylene wash line that will increase its processing capacity by 100 million pounds per year. Company General Manager Scott Saunders said the line will boost efficiency.

A Midwest man was sentenced to three years of probation and an East Coast man pleaded guilty to a hazardous waste crime in court cases that both involve TV recycling.

U.S. MRFs are bearing lower prices for curbside fiber and plastic loads this month, with particularly painful declines reported for HDPE and PP.

California officials will provide payments of up to $180 per ton to recycling facilities that limit contamination in PET bales to 2% or less.

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