Deep learning uses artificial multilayered neural networks and a vast amount of labeled sensor data to learn how to classify or detect objects. For the detection and classification of images, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) primarily are used. The name is based on one of three types of layers used in this network architecture: convolutional layers, pooling layers and fully connected layers.

Convolutional layers connect neighboring pixels as inputs for the next layers, thereby detecting local structures in the image. Convolutional layers typically are stacked with pooling layers, which downsample the image and condense the information in the convolution layers. Image features are calculated by stacking these layers and are classified in the fully connected layers, the last of the three layer types. (See Figure 1 below.)

The ImageNET Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) illustrates the performance of CNN architecture. ILSVRC evaluates algorithms for object detection and image classification on a large scale. In this challenge, deep- learning architecture defeated human performance in detecting and classifying 1,000 object categories.

The best classification and detection results are achieved using deep- learning techniques. Because of their extensive use and low cost, RGB (red, green and blue) color cameras were the first sensors evaluated. But an RGB camera cannot tackle all the sorting tasks in the recycling industry. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy sensors offer a solution to this problem. This type of sensor in combination with classical machine-learning algorithms works fine, but its use with deep-learning algorithms could lead to even better sorting results.

New possibilities

The recycling industry presents a number of sorting tasks, and, for some of them, the results achieved by sensor- based sorting machines do not meet the required purity. These tasks are currently performed by humans and are subject to error. One example is removing silicon cartridges from a polyethylene (PE) stream. If these cartridges are not removed, the silicon will disturb the PE recycling process. This task is performed at a hand-picking station at the end of the sorting line.

The results from the ILSVRC lead to the assumption that deep-learning techniques could detect silicon cartridges with an accuracy close to or even higher than that of hand pickers. One might assume that the cylindrical shape of the silicon cartridges means the task is easily solved with a classical machine-learning approach. Yet, the problem is more complex than this approach can handle.

Variations in the cartridge opening, cartridges with or without tips, deformed cartridges or even partly demolished ones can affect sorting performance. All these objects must be detected and classified correctly.

After detecting and classifying the objects, they must be sorted as defined in the given task description. This can be realized in different ways, such as by using a robotic arm or a classical valve block. The latter approach can remove multiple identified cartridges efficiently and reliably at the high conveyor belt speeds used in industrial applications. The distance between the sensor measurement and the place of ejection is small and therefore the calculation time is limited to milliseconds. This might constitute a problem because the calculation performed in a deep-learning model can be quite complex. This is also the case during training, where the variables that form the network are determined by feeding thousands of input samples to the network, which requires massive storage volume and calculations. The time required for training can be reduced to a more feasible period of days or hours by parallelizing the calculations on graphic cards and deploying cloud technologies.

The network also could detect and classify other objects with nearly no overhead, allowing for better sorting according to the task defined by the operator. (See Figure 2 below). Deep learning used in combination with NIR spectroscopy can offer the recycling industry a new area of sensor-based sorting.

The future is self-optimization

New developments in the area of deep learning show that algorithms can perform tasks that were previously performed only by humans. The combination of different sensors observing the material stream and fusing their information via CNNs shows great potential to tackle the most difficult sorting tasks in the recycling industry.

By learning from example, future machines will adapt to changing material streams without being reprogrammed. The algorithms will be able to learn which objects have to be removed from the stream, even from only a few samples.

Sorting machines will be connected to the cloud and will contribute to a shared pool of information. False detections also could be incorporated into the learning process across multiple machines. Instead of delivering a sorter with specific software that is preconfigured to detect and eject a certain material, the capabilities, accuracy and efficiency of the connected sorter would improve over time.

Sharing status information allows machine data to be analyzed for diagnostic and maintenance purposes. Also, machines would be able to analyze themselves and could order replacements parts or services to minimize downtime.

These advances in the field of AI would solve many recycling sorting tasks that are not yet feasible to perform using technology. Sorting machines would be able to optimize themselves to achieve the best results for the given requirements set by the operator. That could mean that getting the most out of resources would become much easier.

Daniel Bender is team leader for deep learning, Dirk Balthasar is vice president and head of core R&D and Felix Flemming is vice president and head of digital Tomra Sorting for Germany-based Tomra Sorting GmbH, www.tomra.com/en/sorting/recycling, part of Norway-based TOMRA Systems ASA.

Not a single family of scrap commodities was immune to the restrictions and bans implemented by China in 2018. Certain types of ferrous, nonferrous, paper and plastic scrap all needed to find alternative markets to some degree.

“The good thing about the China problem is that it did not happen overnight,” says Sunil Bagaria, president of GDB International, New Brunswick, New Jersey. “Progressively, they implemented a series of steps. That was enough for anybody to understand the China problem is a permanent problem.”

With that door closing to some U.S. scrap imports, others have opened. India serves as one of the growing countries for U.S. recyclers looking for export markets, specifically for nonferrous and paper scrap.

Dhawal Shah, director at Metco Marketing Pvt. Ltd., based in Mumbai, says India’s consumption of scrap has grown in recent years.

“The overall volumes that we have from last year, imports as well as domestic sources, [went] up,” Shah says. “After China put controls on their policy, I reckon less materials are going there. On the other hand, there has been an uptick in Indian production of secondary nonferrous metals and consumption levels thereof since last year.”

Shah says India is currently the fastest growing major economy in the world, expanding at a rate of 7.5 percent. Therefore, the volume of scrap the country generates and consumes has the potential to grow in the next few years. He adds, “Of course, China may remain the dominating force; however, India is making its own growth story. If [China] slows down their buying, India becomes the natural choice for American companies to plan to sell scrap.”

Need for nonferrous

Demand for ferrous scrap has remained steady in India, and demand for nonferrous scrap has increased. Sanjay Mehta, director at MTC Business Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, and president of the Material Recycling Association of India (MRAI), also based in Mumbai, says he has noticed a great deal of new nonferrous activity in India.

“Nonferrous scrap metal imports have increased in the past 10 years,” he says. “In nonferrous, the quantity has gone up. There are more buyers of that kind of scrap since China’s not [been] in the market” from the last seven to eight months.

Ferrous scrap, on the other hand, faces more international competition. Mehta adds, “In the ferrous market, there are other competitors [for scrap], like Bangladesh, Pakistan or Indonesia.”

Shah says India is the second biggest steel producer in the world, with ferrous scrap being used to produce more than 50 percent of its total steel output.

“The secondary nonferrous sector is also growing at about 10 percent year over year,” he says.

Shah says aluminum is the largest nonferrous scrap import to India, followed by lead, brass and copper.

Mehta says India imports about 85 percent of the aluminum scrap and about 70 percent of the brass scrap it needs.

In recent years, Mehta says India has seen new activity with heavies and zorba imports. He adds that imported nonferrous scrap also tends to be more competitive than India’s domestically collected nonferrous material.

“With nonferrous, we’re largely dependent on the international market—maybe 70 percent dependency,” he says. “For ferrous, it’s hardly 10 to 15 percent of overall total secondary sector production of steel,” he says of scrap imports.

“In the years to come, the recycling industry needs a major shift—a seismic shift—in the way that we take care of our scrap.” – Sunil Bagaria, GDB International

Looking to 2019 and 2020, Shah says he thinks India will continue to steadily increase nonferrous scrap imports.

“China does play an important role,” Shah says. “If there’s a turn in terms of China relaxing its norms in due course, the scrap flows may get tweaked again. However, exporters now may look at investing into other long-term potential markets like India—to deleverage and not get overdependent on one market.

“There are a lot of potential events that we don’t know yet—only time will tell. But I think the secondary industry [for nonferrous] in India will continue to grow this year and next year,” he adds.

Paper and plastics

India also imported more recovered fiber in the past year. In fact, according to the Indian Paper Manufacturers Association, New Delhi, imports of paper and paperboard into India steadily increased over the last seven years at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.11 percent in value terms and 18.15 percent in volume terms.

Dan Gee, senior associate at Atlanta-based Moore & Associates, says India is among the many countries that have received more recovered fiber imports since China placed restrictions on imports of this material in 2018. Other such nations include Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Laos, Philippines and Malaysia.

He adds that India is the biggest consumer of recovered fiber imports on this list of nations, but Gee says the country doesn’t consume anywhere near the amount of recovered fiber that China had consumed.

“The China import situation has really fast-forwarded development and growth in pretty unprecedented figures,” he says. “China is so big that it has consumed over the past 30 years about one-third of the world’s recovered paper.”

While in the near future India might not fill the hole for recovered paper that China left in the market, at the 2018 RISI International Recycled Fiber and Containerboard Conference in Shenzhen, China, Inder Aurora of Mumbai-based Tradecom International Pvt. Ltd. said he is hopeful India can “become the next China” over the next 20 to 30 years.

During the conference, Aurora said India produced about 17.5 million metric tons of paper and board in 2018, and it used recovered fiber to produce 65 percent of that volume. Of the 13.5 million metric tons of scrap paper consumed by India’s mills in 2018, 7.5 million metric tons (about 55.6 percent) were imported.

He said India’s import activity in 2018 increased because of a “price incentive” caused by the declining value of mixed paper and some old corrugated container (OCC) grades on the global market, prompted by China’s stricter standards for recovered fiber imports. He said, “The volumes of [exported] recovered paper to India will gradually keep going up as the optimal use of installed capacities and the restart of stalled capacities” gets underway.

Bagaria notes that “it’s a good thing” that India has stepped up to import some of the recovered fiber—specifically some of the lower quality fiber that had previously gone to China.

“Otherwise,” he adds, “a lot of this fiber would have ended up in a landfill in the U.S.”

While Bagaria says India could serve as a decent export market for recovered fiber grades, he says the country offers less opportunity for plastic scrap.

“In India, you can ship plastic scrap to very few companies,” he explains. “Only very clean grades can go to India.”

Bagaria says he thinks the best solution for plastic scrap generated in the U.S. is to recycle it domestically. “The only permanent solution is to encourage recycling domestically.”

Domestic recycling

Mehta estimates India achieved about a 30 percent recycling rate in recent years.

“Recycling activity in India is not organized yet in comparison with the international market,” he adds.

Yet, Mehta says he is hopeful India’s recycling rate will improve soon. Late last summer, MRAI discussed plans for a National Recycling Policy at the Sustainable Growth Through Recycling: Policy Prescriptions conference Aug. 6, 2018, in New Delhi.

“[While] several policies, acts and rules have been framed by the central government and its departments, an overarching National Material Recycling Policy that would holistically address material recycling has not yet been framed,” writes Amar Singh, MRAI secretary general.

In an effort to understand best practices used in various segments of the global recycling industry, including country-specific legislation and rules, MRAI invited international experts and industry association leaders to share this information at its Sustainable Growth Through Recycling: Policy Prescriptions conference.

Mehta says MRAI has provided a great deal of input and suggestions to NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), the think-tank of India, which since has drafted a National Material Recycling Policy for the government of India. He says this policy has received some government support and it could be introduced before India’s general election in May 2019.

“We are sure that the government will introduce this before the election,” Mehta says. “We have all worked hard on this policy. The policy is India’s responsibility to recycle everything—paper, plastic, metal—and the ability to send that material to organized recyclers and separate it properly so it doesn’t go to landfills.”

Although India imports ferrous, nonferrous and paper scrap today, it might import less of these materials in the future if the country adopts a nationwide recycling policy.

Mehta says he is hopeful that, if adopted, the National Recycling Policy would help India to become self- sufficient and much less dependent on scrap imports in the future. “We are hoping in 10 years there will be minimized imports.”

In the long run, Bagaria says this policy—as well as any other recycling policies developed overseas—could be a good thing for recycling on a global level in general.

“In the years to come, the recycling industry needs a major shift—a seismic shift—in the way that we take care of our scrap,” he says. “It will not go as much overseas. We will have to wake up and find ways to use it domestically and recycle domestically. That’s the need of the hour.”

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at msmalley@gie.net.

The 20th century split between iron and steel scrap yards and nonferrous scrap recycling specialists continues to seem more distant, despite the turmoil in mixed nonferrous shredded grade markets caused by China’s self-imposed blockade.

Each of the 10 largest companies listed in Recycling Today’s updated list of North America’s Largest Nonferrous Scrap Processors operates shredding plants, with these yards drawing in ferrous and nonferrous material from networks of smaller facilities.

Our list is based on figures of nonferrous processing volumes in 2018 provided by 16 of these companies. Four companies are listed that did not provide 2018 figures to Recycling Today, but they were ranked based on previously submitted figures and recently published reports or publicity materials.

Most of the companies listed have shredding capacity as a shared trait, and each of them can be considered dominant players in their respective market regions.

Millions of pounds

Companies supplying information to us did so knowing we would not disclose their exact volumes processed in 2018.

In characterizing them generally, however, each of these 20 firms handled 100 million pounds (50,000 tons) or more of nonferrous material annually. Nearly all the top 10 firms, meanwhile, have made it beyond the threshold of 500 million pounds (250,000 tons) per year.

By no means are shredding plants doing all the work. While the five largest companies operate many such plants, they also buy and sell nonferrous grades that powered the sector long before the first auto shredder was installed, such as radiators, plumbing fixtures and pipes, aluminum siding and used beverage containers (UBCs).

A few firms, such as Michigan-based Schupan & Sons and Universal Scrap Metals in Chicago, have a presence on the list without having installed any auto shredding capacity. Connecticut-based Prime Materials Recovery, No. 12 on the list, has built its empire focusing on wire and cable processing.

Prime Materials moved up two slots on the list from 2017 to 2019, almost certainly helped by the need for American scrap processors to keep wire and cable onshore for additional processing following the Chinese government’s restrictions.

This edition of the list also demonstrates that though shredders were initially installed to process iron and steel found in auto hulks, they now serve as magnets (ironically) for the nonferrous scrap in end-of-life vehicles and appliances.

The company ranking 11th, Michigan-based Huron Valley Steel Corp., focuses on the discipline of finding every last bit of nonferrous metal present in mixed shredded material.

Mapping a strategy

The geography of our list does not offer an abundance of surprises in that most regions of the country are represented by at least one company on the list. No one company, however, covers the entire map.

Veteran scrap recyclers offer several reasons why spreading a management team too far and wide can cause more harm than good. Scrap buying remains a relationship business, and it can also require attentive oversight to fend off questionable (potentially illegal) practices.

Thus, even the largest firms on our list tend to focus on a dominant presence in just a few regional markets.

Companies such as Sims Metal Management and David J. Joseph Co. (DJJ, a subsidiary of Charlotte, North Carolina-based steelmaker Nucor Corp.) might have deep enough pockets to open a yard in any metropolitan area, but that doesn’t make it a sound strategy.

DJJ has created several subsidiaries with their own brands and operating regions. Its six metal recycling subsidiaries operate as far west as Utah and as far east as Florida’s Atlantic Coast.

New York-based Sims and OmniSource (a subsidiary of Steel Dynamics Inc., both based in Indiana) largely follow a similar pattern.

OmniSource has a considerable presence in its home state and the bordering states of Ohio and Michigan. The rest of its facilities are not in adjacent states but instead are labeled as its Southeast region and are in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Sims has a more dispersed presence, which could be a legacy of its creation and original buying spree in the 1990s. Its website lists more than 120 U.S. yards, but more than half are SA Recycling locations, in which Sims is a joint venture partner. Traditional Sims regions include New York City and northern New Jersey, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area.

SA Recycling dominates in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, and—thanks to two acquisitions—now has a major presence in the Southeast.

Acquisitions within the industry have played a minor role in the changes to this edition of our list, with some also pointing to geographic concentration tactics.

Changes in nameplates

In the two years since this list last appeared (in the April 2017 edition of Recycling Today), no mergers took place among large scrap processing firms that have caused a 2017 listed firm to disappear.

SA Recycling has been among the more ambitious acquiring firms this decade, having purchased Georgia-based Newell Recycling Southeast in 2014 and Decatur, Alabama-based Tennessee Valley Recycling in 2017. Each of those firms operated several facilities, including auto shredding plants.

St. Louis-based Alter Trading Corp. (profiled in this issue) also has been active. Its August 2018 purchase of Arkansas- based Tenenbaum Recycling Group added 10 yards and two shredding plants.

A few firms, such as Michigan-based Schupan & Sons and Universal Scrap Metals in Chicago, have a presence on the list without having installed any auto shredding capacity.

Three months later, Alter exited another part of the South by selling its Mobile, Alabama, shredder yard and another facility in Mississippi to SA Recycling.

In the Northeast, Upstate Shredding has increased its shredding capacity beyond its shredder in Owego, New York.

Upstate Shredding–Weitsman Recycling now also operates a shredder in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and is installing a shredding plant in Albany, New York.

Acquisitions and shredder installations gain the attention of the wider scrap market, but the daily activity of buying material from industrial accounts and across scales at yards large and small will continue to determine which firms secure a spot on our North America’s Largest Nonferrous Scrap Processors List.

The business owners and managers of the companies on this list likely would agree that the volumes are impressive, but their margins are what will allow them to remain on this list in the future.

The author is senior editor with Recycling Today and can be contacted via email at btaylor@gie.net.

Leading a company that has more than 100 years of history behind it can make a person anxious, particularly if that person is not related to the family who owns the business. Just ask Jay Robinovitz, chief executive officer of Alter Trading Corp., headquartered in St. Louis.

“My biggest fear: jeopardizing the reputation of honesty and integrity that the Alter company has maintained for more than a hundred years,” he says.

Robinovitz doesn’t have to shoulder that burden alone, however. Alter has an executive team of professionals “that happens to include some very capable family members,” he says. “We are a family business with a truly diverse and professional management team. Although there is a very strong premise of family leadership, in the future, the family and the board has ensured that if that doesn’t happen, the business leadership is solid and sustainable.”

Robinovitz joined the company in September 2009 as senior vice president and chief officer of operations.

“As long as we stay disciplined and keep our inventory moving and our operational costs where they need to be, then we just work through the ever-changing markets as efficiently as possible.” – Jay Robinovitz, Alter Trading Corp. CEO

“I’m just a kid from a small scrap yard in Massachusetts,” he says with modesty. “I have spent my career working for large family-owned or -operated scrap companies and have learned to love the industry, the people, the challenges and the opportunities.”

Prior to joining Alter, Robinovitz worked in various roles for Schnitzer Steel Industries, Portland, Oregon, including vice president of business development and major capital investments, vice president and chief operating officer of the company’s auto parts division and vice president of Northwest operations. He also served as general manager of the ferrous division of Aerospace Metals Inc., Hartford, Connecticut.

Robinovitz says his role at Alter involves helping “to facilitate growth and to work with the Goldstein family to design and implement a long-term growth and succession plan for the scrap business.”

He says that as Senior Vice President of Operations Michael Goldstein, the fifth generation of the family to be involved in the business, takes on more operating responsibility for the company, “it looks like at some point in the future, the reins may be in the hands of a family member once again.”

Robinovitz continues, “For now, we have a strong professional staff that drives solid growth for shareholders.”

He adds that in continuing to put a long-term succession plan in place, Alter recently announced changes to its leadership. Robinovitz retained the title of CEO and board member, allowing Chief Financial Officer Tim Oliver to take the additional title of president. Jack Grundfest, previously the CEO of Tenenbaum Recycling Group (TRG), was named to the newly created role of chief administrative officer, Michael was promoted to senior vice president of operations and Lisa Walden was named senior vice president of finance and accounting.

“The first question is, ‘Am I retiring,’ and the answer is, ‘No,’” Robinovitz says. “It’s just the continuation of a long development process that will allow me to focus on more outward facing issues and opportunities that will help sustain our growth.”

Family at the core

Alter’s ownership currently lies in the hands of the Goldstein family, but that wasn’t always the case.

Alter’s history dates back to 1898. While the names of the founders of that original company have been lost to time, Harry Alter began working for the firm in 1900. His brother, Morris, also joined the business in 1905. By 1908, the brothers were the joint proprietors of Davenport Iron & Metal Co. in Davenport, Iowa, and they remained in business together for 15 years before Morris and his son, Frank, bought Harry out of the company in 1920, forming Davenport Iron & Machinery. The company would first use the Alter name in 1935.

As Bernard “Bernie” Goldstein writes in Navigating the century: A personal account of Alter Company’s First Hundred Years, which was first published in 1998, 11 years before Bernie’s death, it was Frank “more than anything, who was responsible for building the company into significance.”

He continues, “Even if he didn’t found today’s company, he gave it its character, its ambition for growth, its taste for new technology and its unbending integrity.”

Bernie married into the business in 1949, when he wed Irene (who preferred to go by Renee), one of Frank’s two daughters. He joined the company full time in 1951.

Frank eventually gave Bernie and Renee a 45 percent stake in the company and an equal stake to his other son-in-law, Arant Sherman, and daughter Anita. The business was eventually split after divergent ideas about how to manage the company became too great to ignore. Arant and Anita took the nickel alloy business, Alter’s existing nonferrous scrap trade and the steel warehousing business, while Frank and Bernie retained the scrap yard and barge business.

Bernie was elected secretary/treasurer of the company in 1951 and eventually rose to president. Frank remained involved in the business until 1973, when he died of a heart attack.

Bernie led Alter until 1980, when his health necessitated handing over day-to-day management. Alter got its first nonfamily leadership at that point: Chuck Smith. In 1984, the company’s board appointed its first nonexecutive and nonfamily members.

Robert “Rob” Goldstein, one of Bernard’s three sons, replaced Smith as the president of Alter Trading in 1989.

Rob served as president of the company until 2012, at which point Robinovitz was promoted from senior vice president and chief officer of operations to president and chief operating officer. Jan. 1, 2018, he took on the dual roles of president and chief executive officer.

Alter today

Despite the company’s name, Robinovitz says, “The majority of tons sold both in ferrous and nonferrous are internally collected and processed and shipped from Alter-owned and -operated facilities.”

He adds that Alter’s brokerage business allows the company to meet the scrap needs of its largest mill customers and provides real-time information on the global demand for metals.

Alter processes approximately 4 million tons of ferrous scrap annually and trades an additional 1.5 million tons, Robinovitz says. The company handles 600 million pounds of nonferrous scrap per year.

“We sell into a global market, and our products fill the needs of manufacturers around the world every day,” Robinovitz says. “Our ferrous customers tend to be domestic, while more of our nonferrous materials have historically gone overseas, though that balance is changing.”

Alter operates roughly 70 facilities, which include 16 automobile shredders, seven nonferrous recovery systems, an advanced recovery plant for shredded nonferrous metals, two self-service auto parts facilities and three ferrous barge facilities, as well as a trading office in Hong Kong. Nearly 1,400 people work for the company.

“It is a very mature industry, and new technology becomes ubiquitous very quickly,” Robinovitz says. “What allows you to differentiate yourself in our industry is your unwavering commitment to be a good neighbor in the communities you operate in and to prioritize the wellbeing and fulfillment of your employees.”

Robinovitz says employee safety and wellness are his most important personal mission. “Over the years, I have fought hard to make our industry and our company a safer place to work.” That mission is one of Alter’s core commitments.

He continues, “In the past several years in trying to provide the best health care for all of our employees, we also focused on making our employees healthier. It pays great dividends to invest in health screening, health-based activities, preventive measures and incentives for making healthy choices. It works for everyone and builds strong home and work habits.”

He says Alter’s employees help to set the company apart. “Our employees are honest, entrepreneurial and passionate. We challenge them to improve continuously, and then we reward them when we are successful.”

The company is slow to hire, with Robinovitz saying Alter tries to find individuals who are the right fit. “It’s not easy getting onto the Alter team,” he says, “but, once you’re part of Alter, we are there for one another and in it for the long haul.”

Robinovitz says Alter has emphasized employee training and development. “It has become necessary because the days of generation after generation running the scrap yard is fading. Many of the facilities that we have acquired have been [sold] because there was no natural succession plan and families were left with no choice but to exit the business,” he adds.

“And I can’t say enough about all of the great folks that have joined us as part of our acquisitions,” Robinovitz says. “We have gained so many solid leaders and have learned so much from them that we get stronger with every acquisition we complete.”

Organic and inorganic growth

Growth through acquisition is an important factor in Alter’s story. The company has added 55 locations since 1998, primarily by purchasing existing family-owned scrap companies. Alter’s most recent purchase was of 100-plus-year-old TRG of Little Rock, Arkansas, in late 2018. Behr Iron & Metal, Rockford, Illinois, was purchased in 2016, while Alter bought Miller Compressing in Milwaukee in 2012, CMI Group in Nebraska in 2013 and various local operations over the year that it has merged into its regional footprint.

Other companies that Alter has purchased over that 20-year period include Wausau Scrap and Recycling Corp., Wausau, Wisconsin; All Metals Recycling, Ottumwa, Iowa; and Reliable Recycling of Wisconsin.

“Buying facilities that have been in business for more than 100 years says they have a proud place in their communities, and, as the buyer, we need to figure out how to live up to that set of standards,” Robinovitz says.

He adds that Alter is always on the lookout for acquisition opportunities. “What do we look for? Great people, well thought-out assets, strategic locations when possible and cultural fit,” Robinovitz says. “We are not for everyone. We work hard, we play hard, we are fiercely loyal and we are driven competitively. If you’re in it to win it, then maybe we should be your next call,” he adds.

“We never stop looking for the next opportunity to grow, and that is done in a variety of ways. We look for voids in a market or territory, or we partner with a consumer with unique needs. We are always evaluating new technologies that can extract more value and, most importantly, we never stop looking to add smart people with great ideas to the organization. Interacting with and hiring individuals with intellectual curiosity is what makes my job fun.”

Alter invested hundreds of millions of dollars to grow its footprint and capabilities over the last seven years, Robinovitz says. “Those investments have allowed us to come out of the most recent down- cycle far better off than when we entered it. When times get tough, we focus on two things: our costs per unit of output and our inventory turns.”

Photos by Jason Winkeler Photography

A focused approach

“Markets do what markets do,” Robinovitz says. “As long as we stay disciplined and keep our inventory moving and our operational costs where they need to be, then we just work through the ever-changing markets as efficiently as possible. We do not speculate on metals prices. All you need is a computer to do that. We try to buy, process and sell metals all in the same cycle. That said, we are not immune to the volatility in the markets, and if things slow significantly enough and volume stops, we have to adjust like anyone else.”

He adds, “The best thing we can do is be ready for change, diversify the geography of our customer base and keep growing. In times of significant uncertainty and disruption, size and financial strength matter.”

China’s reduced buying of nonferrous metals is one such change the domestic scrap processing industry has been dealing with recently. “Material has sought new homes and in much more diverse locations around the globe,” Robinovitz says. “That diversity makes for stronger economies around the world and less concentration on Southeast Asia, particularly China,” which he says adds flexibility to the marketplace.

Alter started planning for changes in China following the country’s introduction of Operation Green Fence in 2013 by installing a heavy media plant in Davenport in 2015 to further process shredded nonferrous scrap that has already been processed by its seven shredded nonferrous scrap recovery systems. “We continued to trade with China, as we do today, but we diversified our ability to serve new markets and be prepared in the event for a shift away from that market,” Robinovitz says. “In the end, it is about flexibility and a broad consumer base for our finished goods that let us move through all markets with confidence.”

While Alter still sells some zorba domestically and internationally, most of this material is processed through its heavy media plant to create furnace-ready commodities, including twitch.

Alter has invested significantly in its existing facilities, nonferrous recovery technology and acquisitions, he says. “We move as fast as our human capital can make things happen. We spend a lot of time at the drawing board, but once we commit and make a decision, we are off to the races.”

Robinovitz and the leadership team at Alter are counting on this approach to keep Alter Trading Corp. around for another hundred-plus years.

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at dtoto@gie.net.