Alter Trading, based in St. Louis, has acquired the assets of Ben Shemper and Sons, a Hattiesburg, Miss., scrap metal recycler. Shemper and Sons has been in business for more than 100 years. The deal was effective May 1.
The acquired company will be called Ben Shemper and Sons - a Division of Alter Metal Recycling and will retain the approximately 60 employees who currently work there. The acquisition will allow Alter to expand its business operations in the southern United States.
"Our industry is changing at warp speed and the Alter company has built a system where they are evolving and trying to anticipate those changes," he said. "We have been approached by several companies in recent years, but we were never as comfortable and excited about a potential suitor as Alter to take care of our employees and customers who have built this business," said David Shemper, who will remain with the company as a facility manager.
Over the past several years Alter has been making a number of strategic acquisitions, most of which have been in the Midwest. At the present time Alter has more than two dozen processing facilities, five U.S. trading offices, and a trading office in China.
"We bring a lot of resources as far as our ability to make capital improvements and the various markets we have access to," said Alter’s CFO Keith Rhodes. "We have access to additional technologies that are more difficult for the small operator to acquire or implement."