Upstate Shredding – Weitsman Recycling closes Watertown, New York, location

Upstate Shredding – Weitsman Recycling, headquartered in Owego, New York, has closed its Watertown, New York, facility, which the company acquired in 2016 from Empire Recycling.

Adam Weitsman, the company’s owner, told The Post-Standard, Syracuse, New York, that the lease was up on the facility and that it would have been too expensive to renovate the location.

The facility at 511 Pearl St. served peddlers and industrial accounts. All processing took place inside the building, which measured 75,000 square feet and was built during World War II, according to previous reporting by Recycling Today.

Weitsman told the newspaper the facility was its “smallest” and lowest trafficked of the company’s scrap yards. Upstate now operates 13 scrap facilities in New York and Pennsylvania. He also said because all the processing was performed indoors, it “made it very, very difficult to operate.”

The Post-Standard reports that retail customers have been directed to Northstar Auto and Salvage at 28722 State Route 37 in Evans Mills, New York. Northstar, which the paper says is a customer of Weitsman’s, will ship the scrap to Upstate Shredding – Weitsman Recycling’s yard in Solvay, New York.

Adam Weitsman told The Post-Standard that the seven people employed in Watertown have been offered jobs at the company’s Solvay yard.