A sign placed on Adams Center Road concerns a $340 million plan by Exurban USA to recycle materials by extracting valuable metals from e-waste.
A sign placed on Adams Center Road concerns a $340 million plan by Exurban USA to recycle materials by extracting valuable metals from e-waste.
A group skeptical of a metals recycling operation planned for southeast Fort Wayne has formed and will continue questioning the $340 million project proposed by Exurban USA.
Citizens for Environmental Equity SouthEast, or CEESE, wants to raise awareness about the development, which would be at 5667 Adams Center Road. Exurban would accept waste metals from discarded electronics, including computers, cellphones and vehicles and refine them into purified metal stock that can be reused.
Several people affiliated with the citizens’ group spoke at Monday’s Fort Wayne Plan Commission public hearing on the project.
The commission is scheduled to vote Monday on the company’s primary development plan and a request to exceed height limits for several buildings, including a smelter building up to 140 feet tall. Smelters extract metal from other materials using heat, water and chemicals.
The site plan for the recycling operations shows other buildings taller than allowed by the site’s zoning – a warehouse up to 75 feet tall, a tank house up to 90 feet tall and an electronics waste building up to 115 feet tall. Also, buildings described as a “leach plant” and a “Cu-line” are planned to be up to 80 feet tall. “Cu” is the chemical symbol for copper.
The site’s zoning allows buildings up to 50 feet tall. In its application, Exurban said if the height waivers were not granted, the function and capabilities of the facility would be limited.
Citizens for Environmental Equity SouthEast members asked whether the project would pose health hazards from air or other pollution. One member, Ty Simmons of Fort Wayne, questioned the company’s intentions. He asked the plan commission to delay a vote, pending more information on the company and its industry.
The plan commission’s vote stands as the only remaining local say on the project because the site is zoned general industrial. If it weren’t, City Council would need to approve the rezoning.
This year, the Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission agreed to allow Exurban to buy the project’s 76 acres of vacant land at the northeast corner of Adams Center and East Paulding roads for $768,000.
The project is across from the Allen County Sheriff’s Department Training Facility, which has been proposed as a site for a new Allen County Jail. That proposal is being contested by residents because of the proximity to schools, among other reasons.
Exurban’s site also is near a hazardous waste landfill, the Adams Center Landfill, which closed in 1998. It was owned by Chemical Waste Management, just north of the proposed jail site.
Maia Pfeffer of Fort Wayne, an organizer of the citizens’ group, said Exurban’s newness makes it difficult to gauge its track record and production processes because few records exist.
The company is a spinoff of one based in the United Kingdom, and only in late June and July did two Exurban entities register with state corporations officials.
Pfeffer provided what she was able to find out about the company to plan commission members and The Journal Gazette.
The company told the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and local government officials Exurban plans to employ up to 200 people at the site by the end of 2026 in jobs that will pay $50,000 to $70,000 a year. The state corporation awarded Exurban $2.5 million in tax credits and $250,000 in training funds collectible after employment goals are met.
Company officials have provided few details, but in May, Jean-Paul Deco, co-founder of Exurban USA, outlined the company’s strategy for E-SCRAP News, an online recycling industry publication. He said the facility will extract metals from discarded devices and refine the metals into pure product for resale.
He said both pyrometallurgical, using heat, and hydrometallurgical, using liquids including water and chemicals, processes will be used.
Deco, who lives in Canada, said the facility will keep U.S. companies from having to send metal-containing electronics scrap overseas and having to buy metals from other countries, such as China. Exurban intends to focus on non-ferrous metals, which don’t contain iron.
That includes platinum-group metals and precious metals, such as silver and gold, and copper, he said.
The plant won’t target metals in batteries or rare-earth metals because recycling them requires customized facilities, Deco said.
But the facility’s waste stream might include incinerator ash, industrial waste and other materials, depending on market conditions, Deco told E-SCRAP News.
Exurban officials have said the Adams Center Road site is its first in the United States and is unique in the metals-recovery industry. However, other international companies are entering the U.S. in what promises to be a lucrative business.
According to industry online news accounts, the companies include Aurubis, a large copper producer in Germany that opened a plant to reclaim copper near Augusta, Georgia, this year.
Igneo, with French affiliations, plans to build an $85 million mixed-metals plant at the Port of Savannah, Georgia.
Exurban co-owner Wes Adams, who spoke to the plan commission Monday, has told local officials the new facility will be “zero waste” in a closed-loop recycling process and needs the building heights as a noise control measure. The plant will likely take in nearly 50,000 pounds of recyclable material in a year.
Pfeffer, the community activist, said documents and articles show some Exurban officers have been involved in other large international metal recycling companies cited in the United States or abroad for offenses including pollution, money laundering, price-fixing and humanitarian abuses. Glencore, Aurubis, Umicore and others are among those companies.
Deco, for example, worked for Glencore for 12 years, including overseeing the Horne copper smelter in Quebec, described in media accounts as North America’s largest, and an accompanying refining operation.
“I can’t speak directly to their direct involvement” with the problems, Pfeffer said of Exurban officials. “I understand these are large organizations, and it could be that (the executives) were dissatisfied with (how the companies were run) and left,” she said.
Pfeffer added she and others in the group support the idea of recycling and closed-loop, zero-waste systems – although she pointed out “zero waste” doesn’t mean “zero pollution” or “zero risk.”
However, she said, the group at this point has more questions than answers. She added the new jobs “might not be the appropriate metric to use” in judging the worth of the Exurban project.
The approximately 12 Citizens for Environmental Equity SouthEast members plan to keep track of several state environmental permits and local building permits Exurban must receive to start construction next year. The group has sites on Instagram and Facebook. Eighty-three people are following the activist group on Instagram and 37 on Facebook.
The plan commission’s oversight Monday is narrow and is only whether the site plan conforms to the zoning ordinance and if the heights are justified. Pfeffer said she is surprised the approval process does not have more opportunities for public input.
“There should be more from the community where (the project) is going to be located,” she said.
Reporter Rosa Salter Rodriguez has nearly 50 years of experience at newspapers in Pennsylvania and Indiana. She has worked at The Journal Gazette since 2004, covering medical and health issues and land use and development issues.
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