R. Freedman & Son Installing Auto Shredder at Port Facility

R Freedman & Son Inc., Green Island, N.Y., has announced plans to add an auto shredder at its port facility in Coeymans, N.Y. The facility is currently being used primarily for transloading.

Located near the Hudson River in upstate New York, the facility will give the company direct access to the lucrative offshore market, according Maish Freedman, CEO of R Freedman & Son. He adds that having an auto shredder located directly on the waterways will greatly reduce the trucking costs to deliver material to the port. The company is already expanding the facility and he expects to have eight acres when the auto shredder is installed.

The company received a permit to install the shredder in March and Freedman says the company had little difficulty obtaining it. “The location already is zoned for manufacturing, and is in an area that is in desperate need for jobs,” Freedman explains.

The company hopes to complete construction on the auto shredder by early next year. The auto shredder will be an American Pulverizer Heavy-Duty automobile and scrap shredder with a Quad Plus 4000 horsepower CD drive system.

Freedman expects to double the amount of tonnage the company processes in the first year the new auto shredder is operating, from its current 30,000-40,000 tons per year to 60,000-80,000 tons per year.

“We realized we needed a bigger shredder, one that can handle different types of scrap,” Freedman adds.

Along with the shredder, the company will be constructing a building at the Coeymans location that will house its main office. Freedman says the company will have an intricate downstream system at the site that will  include a number of safety and environmental safeguards. It expects to convert its Green Island facility to a feeder yard that will continue to take in both ferrous and nonferrous metals.

The 12-acre Green Island site does have an auto shredder, although Freedman points out the machine has become a less efficient. This company has been operating the shredder for around 15 years, and the shredder has become what Freedman calls a “maintenance nightmare.” When the new auto shredder is installed, R Freedman will convert the older, 1500 HP shredder system to shred aluminum.

Along with plans to build the new shredder at its deepwater site, R Freeman & Son says that it is in negotiations to grow the company’s operations through acquisitions, joint ventures and establishing feeder yards throughout New York State. While the company has not yet made any deals, Freedman says that the company is close to completing a deal with one company, and is holding discussions with two other companies in the area.