http://www.simplemethods.biz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=333:myths-about-sugar&catid=7:articles&Itemid=9
After building his fluorescent light bulbrecycling company, H.T.R. into a national player with customers thatincludd , Walgreens, and Lowe’s, Dufner sold the business in Marcn to Houston-based an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’s revenu e reached $6 million last year, 17 times more than the $350,00o the company made when Dufner bought it inDecember 1999. A decad e ago, the business recycled about 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a month to keep hazardouas mercury out of landfills andwatere supplies.
That number reached about 18 million bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minority partned and chief operating officer, decided they needed to eithere invest a large amount of capital to open additionalo recycling facilities or find a strategiv partner or buyer for their business. Dufnee turned to lifelong friend Jamee Stuart ofin Clayton. Stuartg reached out to contacts atWastee Management, and after about a year of he helped broker H.T.R.
’s Dufner estimated fluorescent bulb recycling is a $100 millionh to $150 million Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimore noted that garbage disposal is a $52 billion industry and medical waste disposal accounts for another $3 billion to $4 billion. Add-on services such as recyclingg can help a company win additionalmarket share. “Ond of Waste Management’s core goalas is to grow its medical waste business toabout $300 milliobn in revenue in the next 24 Hoffman said.
“Now they can walk into health-care facilitiezs and hospitals and offer to disposes of theirmedical waste, regular trash and also thei fluorescent bulbs, which for a hospital is no small Waste Management, North America’s largest waste disposal posted net income of $1.09 billion on revenue of $13.4 billio n last year and employs about Dufner, 54, grew up in Granite City and St. attending and at In 1991, he bought one of the first franchises ofEartuh City-based Dent Wizard, a companyu that provides paintless dent removal for automobiles. Dufner moved to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgiasand Alabama.
But in 1998, Atlanta-basefd acquired Dent Wizard and proceederd to buy outits franchisees. Dufnetr sold his business for about $5 million, and at age 45 founrd himself looking for anew venture. In 1999, while at the Lake of the Dufner struck up a conversation with an employee of H.T.R., a three-year-old company then based in the smalol town of Golden City in southwest Missouri. A new federal law regulatingb the management of wastre containing hazardous materials such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investorss were short on funds to take advantage of potentiall growth. Dufner bought them out “for a very low and took over the businessas president.
Dufner recruited Kohout, a friend who owned a gun storesin St. Louis and was familiar with dealingh withgovernment regulators, to help run the business and expanf its service area nationwide. They invested in some tractor-trailers and started picking up burned-out fluorescentt bulbs from all over the country and haulingf them back to Missouri for Over the nextfew years, they relocated the planf to its current location in Kaiser, Mo., near Lake As Dufner improved customer service and the speer of waste pickup using third-party freight companies, business boomed. Beginningb in 2003, H.T.R. securef contracts with Wal-Mart to pick up and recycle used bulbs.
Other larg e retailers, several colleges and universities, and statesz such as Iowa and Missourio also signed up with All of the material in thebulbxs H.T.R. picked up — metal and glass — was recycled. None went to But with the boom, Dufner and Kohout also foundr themselves facinga decision: Expand to keep up with increasinhg volume, or find someone who could do so for “The right way to do it woulde be to build two more recycling plants, one on the West Coastg and one on the East to cut transportation distances and freight Dufner said. “Ray and I can’t be in thre e places at one time.
It was going to requirw a lot more capitak to open two new facilities and manag ethem properly.” So Dufner, who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyer last year and eventuallyu struck the deal with Waste Management. “Wr thought H.T.R. would make a good fit for us,” said Rick senior business director forWaste Management’a WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the countruystill isn’t recycled properly, and that’s where we thinjk the upside is.” The and many statews are targeting a fluorescent recycling goal of aboug 75 percent, Kohout said.
Some 800 million fluorescentg lamps burn out each and now millions of residential lighrt sockets are also switchingy from incandescent to compactf fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). Althougg Missouri does not require residential recycling of manystates do, he said. “The timinh was perfect,” said Kohout, who continuesd to run the former H.T.R. operations withim WM Lamptracker. “We are now the largest lamp recycled inthe country, and Waste Managementy is really pushing the sustainability and recycling We’ve had nine years of double-digit growth, and we’ve just gottenm started.
” As for Dufner, he is buildingh a home in Ladue and has not decided if anything, he will do next. “A m I looking for something? Possibly, but not necessarily,” Dufne r said. “That’s how H.T.R. happened. I wasn’tg really looking and then it fell inmy
No comments:
Post a Comment