As the need for copper rises, cable manufacturers recycle more
In an industrial suburb of Montreal, sheets of copper move along a conveyor belt suspended four stories above the floor of a foundry — a metals plant — until they drop into a lava-hot furnace
MONTREAL (AP) — In an industrial suburb of Montreal, sheets of copper move along a conveyor belt suspended four stories above the floor of a foundry — a metals plant — until they drop into a lava-hot furnace. Next come pieces of discarded copper wire.
Out of the furnace comes liquid copper, alight with green fire. It travels to a second furnace and from there, a river of orange copper flows out, to be shaped into copper rods, the raw material for copper wire.
This Nexans mill has made copper rod from ore for nearly a century. But now it also makes an increasing amount of it from used copper, with the rods containing some 14% recycled metal. It hopes to get to 20%.
“We say to our customers: Your waste of today, your scrap of today is your energy of tomorrow, so bring back your scrap,” said Nexans CEO Christopher Guérin.
