Upstate Shredding Signs Lease with Port of Albany

Upstate Shredding, Owego, N.Y., has signed a 15-year lease with The Port of Albany, N.Y., with options for two five-year extensions. The deal will allow the scrap metal company to build and operate a scrap metal trans-loading facility on 18 acres at the port.

In an early December posting to the Upstate Shredding Facebook account, owner Adam Weitsman comments, “Tomorrow I finally start building my export port in Albany, N.Y., after 14 long years of working on it.” Weitsman also refers to the undertaking as “my largest project to date.”

A Dec. 14 article in The Business Review of Albany refers to the project as “a $15 million shipping center” that will soon be linked to “a $35 million automobile shredding operation.”

According to Richard Hendrick, general manager of the Port of Albany, in concert with receiving approval to site the trans-loading facility, Upstate also has applied for the permit to build and operate a 10,000 hp auto shredder at the site.

The 18-acre port location reportedly has access to rail sidings, which will be used as Upstate Shredding brings in processed scrap metal from its other yards to be loaded into ocean-going vessels.

The port’s Hendrick says Upstate Shredding will take over roughly 10 acres presently used by Cargill for a de-icing operation, plus five acres that are vacant and three acres that are being used by a waste management firm.

Hendrick says Upstate already has contracted with a demolition firm to knock down one building. The company then expects to pour concrete and erect a scale house, an inside storage facility and a building designed for fluids removal. The scrap metal company expects to start the demolition part of the project by early January, with construction of the new buildings to begin by the end of the first quarter of 2013.

While a local agency had requested the company erect an eight-foot fence around the facility, Upstate Shredding has sought a variance to allow the company to erect a 10-foot fence around the plant. Hendick says Upstate Shredding also has informed the port that after its concrete pad is poured, “nothing will touch the dirt.”

Upstate Shredding also has reported on its Facebook page that it has closed on a deal to acquire the former Ferrotech facility in New Castle, Pa., near that state’s border with Ohio. “We just purchased at a bankruptcy auction today the old Ferrotech scrap yard in New Castle, Pa.,” says Upstate in its Dec. 13 web posting. “Ben Weitsman of New Castle will be opening in approximately six months.”