Wendt Strikes Deals with Protec, ESCO

In a separate move for Wendt Corp., Sunbelt Wendt LLC has reached an agreement with ESCO Corp. to supply wear castings to the automobile shredding industry throughout North America and parts of Europe as ESCO’s authorized sales agent.

Portland, Ore.-based ESCO Corp. has more than 85 years of experience as a cast steel products manufacturer.

Sunbelt Wendt will offer manganese and alloy steel ESCO castings for virtually any manufacturer of shredders in quantities ranging from a single casting to an entire truckload or sea container load.

In its role as a Protec distributor, Wendt can now supply Protec equipment for the separation of nonferrous scrap in stand-alone single and double density heavy media plants. Protec, also known as Process Technologies, is headquartered in Genova, Italy and has been designing, manufacturing and installing heavy media plants for many years.  Heavy media separation is often the next step following eddy current separation. The process extracts the aluminum in a furnace-ready form from the mixed nonferrous metals through a float and sink process.

The agreement between Wendt and Protec was finalized after discussions with the principals of Protec – Giovanni Machiavelli, Enrico Molinari and Antonella Uggioni—and Wendt Corp. CEO Thomas A. Wendt.

Wendt says both agreements will reinforce Wendt Corp.’s position as an across-the-board supplier to metal shredder operators. “Everything we do is focused toward the shredder operators,” he remarks.

The ESCO agreement is an expansion of a supplier agreement that has existed between ESCO and Sunbelt Technologies both before and after it was a part of Wendt Corp. Along with the continuation of that agreement, “we also now become ESCO’s agents for Scandinavia, the U.K. and the Benelux countries, along with U.S. and Canada,” says Wendt.

Wendt praises ESCO castings for their metallurgical properties resulting from the company’s “heat treating facilities and metallurgy knowledge. They are a quality organization with a state-of-the-art production foundry.”

Protec will join other European manufacturers whose equipment is represented by Wendt Corp., including Colmar loggers from Italy and Eldan wire processing equipment from Denmark.

“Protec has a very unique product,” says Wendt. “It’s a small company, but they have a lot of experience in media processing within the mining industry and the scrap industry. They’ve been very successful in Europe with these stand-alone mini media plants. It’s the logical next step for any shredder operator who has eddy currents,” he remarks.

The heavy media separation equipment is shipped pre-assembled and pre-tested in intermodal sea-containers. After being unloaded, the system can process enough material per hour to keep up with the output of one mega-shredder or several smaller shredders, according to Wendt.