Pacific Steel Opens New Facility

Pacific Steel and Recycling, a Montana-based scrap metal recycling firm, has opened a 13-acre scrap metal recycling facility in Kennewick, Wash. The new location is less than one mile away from a current facility operated by the company.

Patrick Kons, Pacific Steel’s vice president of scrap operations, says the new facility will allow the company to significantly increase its processing ability in the Kennewick area.

In addition to being roughly four times larger than the previous plant, most of the new facility will be paved, making for a cleaner, more efficient operation, according to Kons. The new plant, which officially opened Jan. 3, 2012, also has scales, a baler, a building for processing nonferrous metals and a remediation building to allow the company to drain fluids from automobiles.

A local news report says that in addition to handling ferrous and nonferrous metals, the facility will accept various types of obsolete electronics.

“The new facility will be very user friendly,” Kons says. “Our former facility was very tight. It limited our ability to do business.”

While the company has shifted its operations to the new facility, Pacific Steel says it will hold onto the smaller Kennewick operation, using it as a storage location.

Pacific Steel operates 42 facilities in nine states, primarily in the Northwestern part of the United States.