NC Electronics Recycler Seeks to Expand Business

Global Electric Electronic Processing Inc. held an open house last week to showcase some new equipment that the company feels will allow the company to grow its business.

Dan Roe, general manager of the facility, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barrie Metals Group, has been in operation for around four years. However, Roe notes that until recently the company basically acted more as a transfer station for electronics equipment, rather than a full-fledged processor of the collected material. That has changed as the company purchased new equipment that allows the company to expand its business from not only refurbish and resell obsolete equipment, but also perform shredding of the remainder, and marketing the processed material on a global scale.

The facility is roughly 370,000 square feet, with close to half of the facility in an air controlled setting, to ensure effective refurbishing of the equipment, according to Roe.

The shredder that is expected to be fully operational and running at close to capacity by the end of this year, takes up around 30,000 square feet, and is a shredder and hammermill. According to local press reports the shredder is 22 feet tall, and will be capable of processing around 24 tons of e-scrap a day. The cost of the equipment is around $4 million.

Until now, 20 workers at GEEP disassembled computers and other electronics by hand, to recover materials such as steel, copper and aluminum. They processed about 3,500 pounds a day -- just a fraction of what the shredder will do. Then the electronics were shipped to the company's Canadian headquarters for disassembly and shredding.

Along with shredding the e-scrap, the company also is close to opening up its monitor recycling line, which, Roe feels, also should be completed by the end of September.

The facility will likely be taking in material from most of the mid-Atlantic region, and will look to obtain material from both large and small companies, as well as municipalities and government entitites. The company is setting up a number of partnerships throughout the world were they will be able to move the material.

As for the market, "I believe electronics recycling will be one of the fastest growing parts of the recycling industry," Roe says. "I feel like electronics is a place to be."