A Passion for Paper

Canada Fibers has successfully partnered with converters, municipalities and recycling equipment suppliers to become a leading provider of comprehensive paper recovery services.

Since its founding in 1990, Canada Fibers Ltd., of Toronto, Ontario, has grown into one of North America's largest independent, full service paper recovery firms. A 200,000 square foot recovery facility in Toronto serves as the nucleus for the company's recovered paper processing, warehousing and confidential document destruction services for the paper industry.

While paper recovery serves as the company's foundation, Canada Fibers has recently branched out into multi-material processing as well. The company currently operates a dual-stream MRF for the city of Hamilton, located 45 miles west of Toronto. This facility processes a variety of recyclable materials that are collected from city residents. For this project, Canada Fibers made significant investments to update equipment and optimize the facility's daily output.

The company is also scheduled to open a single stream processing operation in the city of Toronto next fall. "The single stream MRF is a 'design, build and operate' contract for Canada Fibers," says Director of Recovered Fiber, Jake Westerhof. "We're transforming an existing container MRF into a highly efficient single stream operation, scheduled to open in November 2004." The new facility will process 100,000 tons of material per year including fiber, plastics, glass and metal containers for the city of Toronto.

At the present time, Canada Fibers' main Toronto facility is still the heart of the business, representing the majority of the business revenues. At this facility, paper is delivered, processed, stored and shipped to consuming mills for use in a variety of end products such as napkins, tissue, office paper, newspaper and cardboard boxes. Canada Fibers' recycling specialists pride themselves on the ability to market all grades of paper — from newsprint to linerboard — to a wide range of consuming paper mills around the globe.

The company's ability to operate these three facilities profitably is, in large part, due to their careful selection of equipment used to process the materials. "The name of the game is getting materials in and out the door as quickly as possible," Westerhof says. "We invested considerable time up front to make sure we were buying equipment that could handle an output of up to 4,000 tons per week."

From the beginning, all processing equipment purchased and installed within Canada Fibers as well as their customer facilities has been acquired through an alliance with Machinex Recycling Technologies of Pickering, Ontario. Machinex is known worldwide as a designer and manufacturer of custom MRF systems including conveyors, separators, control systems and complete structural steel packages. The company's Pickering office handles Canadian sales and distribution of Machinex equipment. This branch also specializes in the sales of baling, shredding and air handling systems including baling wire and machine parts. OEMs represented include American Baler Company of Bellevue, Ohio, a leading manufacturer of high-efficiency balers.

Westerhof says, "We've developed a relationship with Machinex over the years, we know that they represent dependable, high-quality machinery and we benefit from having a local supplier to provide factory-trained service and an extensive inventory of spare parts. This keeps downtime to a minimum in the event of a breakdown."

With this equipment in place, Canada Fibers provides highly efficient fiber processing and recycling services to a wide range of customers — primarily printers, packers and municipalities in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Westerhof explains, "Our trailers can be found primarily throughout Ontario, upstate New York and New England, but we also have customers throughout the midwest and southeastern United States. When distance makes it cost prohibitive to transport materials by truck, we freight the materials by rail."

While a large portion of the company's scrap paper is delivered to the Toronto facility, Canada Fibers also goes out to area businesses and picks up waste paper scrap by the truckload. To support this function, the company employs an in-house brokerage group that coordinates the movement of this recovered fiber.

One of Canada Fibers' more unique business strategies involves the negotiation of exclusive supply agreements with printers and packers. In these agreements, Canada Fibers will capitalize and purchase the necessary processing machinery, including conveyors, shredders and balers, for installation at their customer facilities. In return, Canada Fibers gains exclusive rights to the materials for marketing to its network of consuming mills. "Our incentive to install machinery at our customer sites is really two-fold," Westerhof says. "First and foremost, it's a drive toward getting as much recovered fiber out of the waste stream as possible. Secondly, by influencing more companies to recycle, we can more readily meet the demands of our consuming mill partners."

In these exclusive supplier arrangements, all or some portion of the customer's waste paper revenues are typically used to re-pay the equipment.

Canada Fibers has also entered into a number of contracts with converters that already own processing equipment or have chosen to buy new machinery based on recommendations supplied by Canada Fibers experts. For those companies that choose not to invest in the equipment, Canada Fibers also accepts loose, unprocessed waste paper to be sorted as necessary and baled at their Toronto facility.

With an immense quantity of material entering the facility daily from a multitude of originating sites, Canada Fibers' Toronto processing operation now runs 24 hours a day, five days a week. "Our Toronto facility processes over 16,000 tons of material per month utilizing a system of conveyors, sorters and shredders, as well as four high-production balers," Westerhof says. "Our equipment runs non-stop from Monday to Saturday morning."

Approximately 100,000 square feet of the Toronto facility is dedicated to the actual processing operation. In one area, mixed fiber from municipal and commercial sources is dropped off by contracted carriers. These materials are transferred from a large receiving area to one of two conveyor lines that carry the fiber to the sorting areas. Here the fiber is sorted, then fed to one of two balers on this side of the building, where it is baled, automatically wire tied, weighed and made ready for shipment.

On the opposite side of the facility, higher grades of offset papers are processed, typically delivered by area printers and packagers. Since the material is source separated, there is no sorting equipment within this part of the operation. Instead, the area houses the company's only shredder, used for their confidential document shredding services. After leaving the shredder, material is fed by conveyor to the hopper of the company's third baler. Items not requiring shredding are simply fed onto a conveyor straight into the fourth baler to complete the processing.

"Flexibility is built into the system throughout the plant," Westerhof says. "If we do have a problem with any of the equipment, we have the ability to redirect material into one of the other lines."

The baling equipment is especially important to the daily output of any waste processing facility. Westerhof confirms, "Our balers have to keep up with the rest of the process to prevent a bottleneck in the production line." According to Westerhof, American Baler Co. has been Canada Fibers' baling equipment provider of choice for a number of reasons — primarily past performance and competitive price.

The specific baler models selected are based on their production output, the type of waste paper to be baled, budgetary considerations, physical space constraints, and required features such as fluffers and automatic wire tie systems.

"American Baler offers a number of baler models to meet our specifications," Westerhof says. "In our Toronto facility, four American Baler machines are currently in use — an older wide-mouth baler is used to process high-grade printer's waste. It's a '94 model and still running full-speed. The other three are larger wide-mouth models, used for just about every other type of paper. That's the beauty of these machines — they can handle whatever we give to them."

All of these American Baler machines produce dense bales weighing between 2,500 and 3,000 pounds, with bale densities of up to 39 pounds per cubic foot, depending on the model and the type of material baled. Automatic wire-tying is the final step in preparing materials for shipment.

While Canada Fibers' Toronto facility is equipped with approximately 50,000 square feet of warehousing space, the baled material is typically loaded and shipped out immediately after processing. Finished bales ship by truck, rail or sea-going container, depending upon final destination. In some cases, bales are temporarily stored in the warehouse while awaiting shipment to the consuming mill.

"The quality of the bales is a very important component in the overall process," Westerhof says. "The heavier bales produced by American Baler's equipment allows us to minimize required storage space. We can also more effectively maximize our payload for each shipment."

He concludes, "Canada Fibers is an expert in the waste paper business. Our customers benefit from our knowledge and ability to implement the lowest possible cost, yet, through our partnerships with key equipment suppliers, we're able to provide highly efficient systems that meet each customer's specific needs."
5/05