10 reasons why paper and cardboard recyclers are choosing the AMCS Platform

Paper and cardboard is a part of the recycling industry where managing your costs to  understand your margin if critical. 

Trading in increasingly volatile markets requires understanding what material is in your yard, what recovered fiber you have coming in, and how to maximize the prices you receive for your product.

Increasingly, paper and cardboard traders have to deal with complex logistics from suppliers, and especially the export market. 

Whether you are a large mill group or a small collection operation, you need a comprehensive enterprise management software solution to provide you with the necessary process automation, visibility, and control of your business operations.

The AMCS Platform for Paper Recycling is proven in delivering better business outcomes for recyclers across sectors including recovered fiber, scrap metal, plastics and general waste.

With its depth of functionality, the AMCS Platform addresses your needs in helping you comply with regulation, understanding the volume and weight of your inventory, where your different grades are stored, knowing the quality of the paper and cardboard you have, the valuation of your material, and ensuring you know when and where any input material is coming from, or output material is going to.

In this article, we outline the 10 reasons why paper and cardboard recyclers, collectors and traders are choosing the AMCS Platform to optimize their business performance, boosting those previous profit margins. 

1. Take control of your transport operations

Those companies that have their own collection fleets will know that this is a key cost center, especially when fuel prices are so high. By optimizing the planning and collection of collection schedules across your fleet, you can reduce costs.

The AMCS Transport Management System is the most advanced logistics solution on the market. It provides a range of planning tools such as built-in digital maps, distance and time calculators, on-demand optimization services, real-time tracking, driver mobile solutions and vehicle telematics.

Indeed, the AMCS route optimization solution means your company is reducing its fuel use while ensuring customers get the best possible service.

For those that have larger fleets, it provides detailed tracking of internal transport costs by vehicle type.

In those businesses that outsource to third-party haulers, you can track your cost per load and margins, while also getting greater understanding of the service that is provided to your customers.

2. Actively track and manage your container assets to increase return on investment (ROI)  

Many recovered fiber businesses will provide customers with containers to place their paper and cardboard in for recycling.

These assets can be an expensive investment, so it is essential to maximize their use. 

The AMCS Platform enables visibility and tracking of containers so that you know where they are and what they are being used for. You can also automatically trigger rental changes to ensure these assets are generating a return for your business at all times.

3. Know your inventory and its valuation to make smarter trading decisions

At any one time you might have many different grades of material in your yard. It could be OCC, mixed paper, residential sorted paper, sorted office paper or old newspapers.

The value of these grades can change considerably with some worth more than others depending on supply and demand.

By understanding your inventory in terms of knowing where it is stored and its valuation, you can maximize your trading decisions. Is it a good time to buy in more stock, or are you full, or prices are falling? Do you believe high prices are close to reaching a peak and you need to maximize sales to achieve the best value?

Having access to this information through the AMCS Platform allows you to make smart and timely decisions that reduce cost, boost revenue and therefore help your profit margin grow.

Our Inventory Management solution provides your business with real-time inventory valuation, which is based on real time access to inventory data. This includes all relevant costs based on a weighted average cost method. It means you know what you have available to sell and the costs involved, allowing for gross margin projection.

This solution tracks and records all of your buying costs on a weighted average across a monthly reporting period, helping you to adjust your buying strategy. 

The AMCS Mobile Yard Management module provides a record of your paper and cardboard grades so that you can be constantly updated with accurate and reliable information. 

For those companies supplying to domestic mills that have a required specification and export nations that require inspections or specification, the AMCS Mobile Yard Management module also helps with inspection and grading. It also means that extra claim fees can be generated and automated when the material does not meet the desired specification.

Download the AMCS Mobile Yard brochure below to learn more.

4. Automate contract and price management to drive your profit margins 

The AMCS Platform comes with a built-in pricing engine. This offers best-in-class configuration and automation to protect and enhance margins. 

Its key features for paper and cardboard recyclers includes:

• Pricing linked to your agreed market index less any cost per tonne offset. An estimated price is shown before the agreed price is finalized. This helps to reduce administration, reduces errors and allows for real-time price tracking
• Tiered pricing is possible which incentivizes sellers to provide quality tonnages and volume of material over an agreed billing period
• Material that is re-graded or inspected at lower or higher quality and is captured on the Mobile Yard Management system will be automatically updated with the new price
• Our multi-level hierarchical pricing engine is designed to ensure you always have access to the correct price for your customers based on the grades they provide. This is defaulted up to four levels on our price hierarchy.

5. Automate and integrate the paper and cardboard value chain

Wherever your business sits in the paper and cardboard value chain, there are opportunities to add automation and integrate your business more smoothly within it.

The AMCS Platform automates and integrates each process in your operation, and those of customers too, guaranteeing that you have full awareness of your enterprise-wide data and control across all operations.

All of the information recorded or entered into the Platform (whether that is by the customer/supplier or in your mobile yard application) is updated in real-time and available to every user. 

The full ability of the solution includes:

• Transport and freight
• Scale Weigh and Pay
• Grading and inspection of material
• Contract and price management
• Invoicing, Finance (AP/AR), and Business Intelligence
• Production Planning (e.g., baling) and Management
• Mobile yard management
• Inventory management and Valuation
• Material sales
• Financials
• Brokerage
• Demand planning
• Outbound Logistics
• Digital Engagement with suppliers and haulers

To learn more about the AMCS Platform download the brochure below.

6. Engage digitally with your haulers to deliver administration savings

Logistics is a vital part of the recovered fiber industry and often third-party haulers are used to collect or deliver the material.

Often, this engagement with partners is done via manual, time-consuming processes like email, inputting into spreadsheets and telephone calls. This can mean large administration costs, potential manual errors, having to correct mistakes, and delays on billing at the end of the month. 

The AMCS Hauler Portal allows the full digitalization of orders, data and billing between your business and third-party haulers.

All orders are digitally exchanged, including confirmations, tickets and invoices using the portal. Here, all current agreed prices, licenses and other details are stored.

This control and automation allows your business to operate an asset-lite model by efficient use of third-party haulers.

7. Engage digitally with your fiber suppliers and customers

The AMCS Supplier/Customer Portal allows your suppliers and customers to view and download documentation like tickets, reports, payments and more. It also allows them to request services, so if their back-of-store container is full for example, then they can request collection whenever it suits them 24/7. 

This reduces contact center or calls to your office, emails and associated costs and delays when this is a manual process.

Download the AMCS Customer Portal brochure below to learn more

8. Grow your paper and cardboard recycling business on the only true SaaS-based Enterprise Solution

The AMCS Platform is a SaaS solution, meaning it is a subscription cloud service. It is designed to offer the highest levels of scalability, security and availability for large enterprise customers.

It has a modern and intuitive user experience, and is easy to navigate with guided workflows that are designed around key users such as transport planners, operations managers and yard teams. 

The Platform is designed to maximize user productivity and ensure rapid user adoption. It can be operated securely anywhere through a browser, meaning it is also available on any device. This boosts the productivity of remote and mobile workers such as drivers, sales, staff working from home and yard staff. 

It is a solution designed for multiple yards, territories and countries with multi-company and multi-currency support.

Download the AMCS Enterprise Resource Management brochure below.

9. Boost the productivity of yard staff by empowering them with our Mobile Yard Management application

The AMCS Mobile Yard Management application is designed to automate all aspects of the inspection and break down of all loads of recovered fiber. 

It allows the operator to take images of each bale, as well as break down the material by percentage and weight. In addition, the user can make adjustments that can lead to financial changes, such as to prices paid or charged. The user can also make changes based on re-classification of the material, plus any required extra processing charges.

The AMCS Mobile Yard Management application is fully integrated with the AMCS Platform, so data such as material images and price adjustments are automatically updated across the system and available to all users including suppliers and financial teams.

Download the AMCS Mobile Yard Management brochure below to learn more.

10. Drive best practice automation with AMCS paper and cardboard expertise

The AMCS Platform reflects our experience in serving thousands of customers worldwide. These include global businesses and small family-sized operations.

With more than 100 development staff working on the AMCS Platform, you can be assured that our experience means that the software is designed to run your business as optimally as possible. 

Each year, we have three releases of new software development adding to the functionality of your system. It means our clients are ready for innovation and digital transformation.

As well as this deep sector experience, we have a global resourcing commitment to support smooth deployment and ongoing support of our solutions to ensure the success of our customers. 

AMCS understands that paper and cardboard recycling can be a complex business, but we also know that we can simplify your processes, boosting your profit margin.