Excited to explore ReMA2025 – The Show’s exhibit hall but not sure where to start? No problem. ReMA News spoke with several of the convention’s top sponsors for a sneak peek at what attendees can expect from their booths and to find out what these companies are looking forward to at ReMA2025.
VALIS – Emily Molstad, Co-Founder & CEO
What can attendees look forward to from Valis at ReMA2025?
We’ll be sponsoring an educational session—Sustainable Workforce: Build, Hire, Retain, and Promote—well as the ReMA Women in Recycling (WIR) Council networking reception. The session, which is also hosted by WIR, will be held on Wednesday, May 14, 3:30-4:45 PM and the reception will be later that evening 5:30-6:30 PM at the Rustic Root Rooftop.
I’ve been attending WIR meetings for a couple of years, and I’ve loved learning from the other women in the council. When we learned about these sponsorship opportunities, I thought it was a great way to get VALIS more involved with ReMA and celebrate the incredible women in the recycled materials industry.
The recycled materials industry has historically been a male-dominated space. But it’s changed a lot over the last few decades as we’ve seen more women move into engineering and STEM-related fields as well as other fields like accounting, finance, and sales.
The fact that we’re seeing organizations such as WIR and the Association of Women in the Metal Industries (AWMI) continue to grow within the space is a testament to the fact that the industry is moving in the right direction. At the end of the day, diverse perspectives help industries grow, evolve, and meet the demands of the day.
Could you tell me about VALIS and its founding?
My passion has always been sustainability. During my undergraduate and graduate studies, I did research at the Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling, an industry-university collaborative research center. Companies in the industry that are facing challenges and can’t bring on an engineering team or researchers are able to collaborate with universities to carry out their research. It was a great first step to learn about the industry and the problems that needed tackling within recycling.
That’s where I met my colleague Sean Kelly, who was getting a PhD in Automotive Aluminum Recycling Technology, and he went on to found Solvus Global. I worked at Solvus Global as a materials engineer and that’s where I met my colleague Caleb Ralphs, VALIS’ Co-Founder and CTO. Caleb went to school for data science and machine learning at the same university as me.
We saw an opportunity to build on Sean’s work, specifically that the equipment being adopted at processing facilities generates a huge wealth of data that’s often underutilized. We were curious what you could do with the data and what challenges could be addressed. In 2019, we participated in the Innovation Corps program through the National Science Foundation. This program allowed us to travel across the country and be the boots on the ground visiting recycling facilities and learning from operators across the industry about the challenges they’re facing today.
We found that many operations relied on information written with pen and paper, that is then typed into a massive excel spreadsheet. And that a lot of the data and information didn’t live in one place, so it was difficult to find the valuable information inside all the data. That’s what sparked VALIS and our decision to build software and data tools for the metal recycling space. We used my background and expertise in metals recycling and Caleb’s expertise in artificial intelligence to create tools geared to increase the efficiency and profitability of operations so facilities can recover more material.
What do you hope attendees will get from VALIS’ booth at ReMA2025?
We’re at booth 2923, so feel free to stop by! You’ll get to see a live demo of our capabilities. We’re excited for attendees to meet with our team members and chat with them about their work and challenges. We want to be a partner that can help recyclers tap into the value of their data so they can easily act and make improvements across their operation that directly improves their bottom-line.
What are you looking forward to at ReMA2025?
ReMA conventions are always packed with everyone you want to talk to in one spot. I’m looking forward to seeing customers and partners in person and getting to meet new people. It’s great to see new developments and innovations in the industry.
The educational sessions will also be valuable. I’m speaking in a session titled “Best Practices: Material Receiving and Grading”, so I’m excited to share how material sampling can drive value for processing facilities and to connect with attendees on some of the challenges they may be facing in this arena.
I’m of course excited for the workforce development session that VALIS is sponsoring— “Sustainable Workforce: Build, Hire, Retain, Promote.” We’re very passionate about workforce development and bringing more diversity into the industry. When high schoolers are considering college or trade schools, they may not initially think about the recycled materials industry being an option, but providing workforce development opportunities can elevate and showcase the industry to show students that this is a great place to build a career, and we love spreading the word.
Photo Courtesy of Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
