Baling Made Easy

Convenience is the main reason recyclers place vertical balers with their retail clients. Setting up retail customers with vertical balers makes it easier for customers to manage their scrap material and for recyclers to recover that material. Recyclers also find that cutting out the middle man gives them more control over the material recovery process.

But, before recyclers can get to the recovery stage, they must first install vertical balers that suit their customers’ businesses and the materials to be recovered.

Recyclers say vertical balers are sufficient for retail settings because they are designed to handle smaller volumes of material, such as cardboard and shrink wrap. Larger balers, such as horizontal or extrusion models that are designed to handle larger volumes of material, would not be as cost effective, recyclers say.

Vertical balers are also preferable in such applications because they don’t have a large footprint, so they can be placed in settings where there isn’t a lot of floor space, says Tom Krughoff, president of Central States Fiber Corp., based in Shelbyville, Ind.

A vertical baler’s footprint usually measures 5 feet by 5 feet with 13 feet of overhead and its weight is typically 5,000 pounds. Krughoff says that along with the vertical baler’s smaller footprint relative to other types of balers, very little space is needed for the staging of materials because once a box is emptied, the corrugated material is placed right into the baler. The customer will continue adding corrugated material to the baler until the unit is full enough to produce a whole bale.

In addition to facility space constraints, recyclers should consider the number of pounds their clients generate weekly, says Mick Barry, vice president of Mid America Recycling, Des Moines, Iowa. "If they’re doing enough to make a bale every couple of days, then a vertical baler makes sense. But, if they’re making a bale every couple of weeks, then they should consider a compactor," he says.

When it comes to selecting the size of vertical baler to install, Barry suggests first walking through the store with the customer to get a better understanding of its disposal practices.

Central States Fiber Corp. sizes its customers’ balers according to the number of times the retailer’s trash compactor is pulled and how many Dumpsters the customer fills per year. Krughoff says a vertical baler is ideal if a retailer produces 20 tons per month of baled material.

Along with the quantity of material these facilities generate, Krughoff also takes into account the viability of the customer before installing a vertical baler in its facility. He says he wants to be sure the company has staying power.

The size of the baler not only depends on the space the retailer can allocate to the baler itself, but also the space available for storing finished bales, says
Amalia DeMatteo DonVito, comptroller/office manager for DeMatteo Salvage of West Babylon, N.Y.

The customer’s space constraints also help a recycler to determine if the client needs a 60-inch vertical baler that produces an 850-pound bale or a 40-inch vertical baler that produces a 300- to 400-pound bale, Brian Holtz, vice president of sales and marketing for City Carton Recycling, Iowa City, Iowa, says.

Steve Hastings, vice president of Hudson Baylor, Newburgh, N.Y., says recyclers should also consider the electrical service available at the client’s location when setting up a vertical baler.

Once the baler’s size has been determined, recyclers also recommend looking into whether the customer wants a fully automated baler or if it prefers a standard model that requires the retailer’s employees to feed the baler and hand tie the bales. Barry says most of Mid America’s retail customers prefer the standard baler because a whole bale can be made on the spot in 15 to 30 minutes.

After installing the baler, recyclers will send someone to the client’s facility to help train the employees on the proper operating procedures and to provide safety tips. Krughoff says reviewing operating and safety precautions as well as routine maintenance only takes half an hour because vertical balers are fairly easy to operate. Recyclers also suggest training the facility’s supervisor and lead machine operator and not a temporary employee.

Service and maintenance are usually included in the deal, unless the retailer has its own maintenance team. If not, then it’s the recycler’s responsibility to come out once every six months, on average, for greasing and oil and bearing checks. Regular maintenance coupled with the fact that vertical balers are designed to make two to three bales per day increase the machine’s longevity. "We’ve got balers we put out 20 years ago that are still running at optimum levels," Barry says. "The only difference is the customer owns them, but we still maintain them."

The main reason Mid America installs balers in retail settings is to facilitate getting recyclables from customers into its processing facilities. "Our profit comes from the material we recover, and this way the customer also gets to save money by reducing its waste stream," Barry says.

Currently Mid America’s facilities in the Midwest process 60,000 tons per month of basic commodities, including paper, plastic, glass and aluminum.

To get these recovered materials back to their facilities for further processing, recyclers must work with the customer to schedule a pickup.

When a customer requests a pickup depends largely on whether the retailer has a warehouse or storage area where it can hold the bales until it has accumulated enough to load into a semitruck, Krughoff says. "A semitruck can hold 36 to 40 bales," he adds.

Even if the customer only produces 10 bales every two weeks, Krughoff says Central States Fiber will schedule these less-than-truckload pickups.

Mid America also accommodates unscheduled pickups, as Barry says most of the time the company’s drivers are in the retailers’ neighborhoods anyway.

When it comes to scheduling, Barry advises recyclers to work with retail customers on their receiving schedules, primarily to learn when their customers’ loading docks are going to be busy.

Hastings says some retailers can only move bales of material after they have been put on a pallet, while others have forklifts available and may opt to store their bales outside. "We have to get [the bale] onto a liftgate if it is stored on the ground and load it via pallet jack or forklift if a loading dock is available," he says.

Installing a vertical baler in a retail setting is a convenient recycling solution for both recyclers and retail customers. "It also gives us the opportunity to establish a relationship with our customers by providing them with an additional service," Krughoff adds.

The author is assistant editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at kmorris@gie.net.