Germany: Vecoplan has appointed Thomas Sturm as its chief operating officer (COO). He will be responsible for production, quality assurance, purchasing, development, assembly and electrical engineering in the newly created position.
He will join the chief executive Werner Berens, chief financial officer Michael Lambert and division heads Dirk Müller, Stefan Kaiser and Markus Claudy in the expanded management team.

Sturm, aged 52 years, is a mechanical engineer who worked for Vecoplan previously from 1992 to 2009. He then moved to a management position in a company specialising in the design, construction and manufacture of complex lightweight structures and later served as COO for a developer and manufacturer of custom-made assemblies for civil aviation.

New Zealand: Golden Bay Cement has announced plans with Waste Management and the government to process tyres at its plant in Portland. The move follows the acquisition by Waste Management of the country’s largest tyre recycling business in 2016. The company is investing in shredders with funding from the Ministry for the Environment. It plans to have a shredding capacity of 30,000t/yr in place in Auckland by October 2017 with a unit to become operational in the South Island in early 2018.

US: St Marys Cement’s Charlevoix plant has remained open following a fire that destroyed its alternative fuels storage facility on 7 June 2017. No one was injured in the incident and work on the plant’s expansion project is continuing, according to the Charlevoix Courier newspaper. The warehouse containing refuse-derived fuels (RDF) caught fire on the evening on the day and was swiftly extinguished by fire services. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has been alerted about the incident.

Brazil: Lindner Recyclingtech is promoting its Urraco 75 moblie shredder for use with refuse derived fuel (RDF) in Brazil and other South American markets. Following the introduction of a landfilling ban in 2015 is hoping to benefit from clients using its products to shred materials such as eucalyptus bark in addition to conventional sources such as municipal waste. The Austrian engineering company uses Siebert & Cia, which operates from Curitiba in Paraná, as its sales partner in the country.