Building Rapport

Few shredding companies go directly to paper mills when selling their shredded paper, opting instead to use recyclers to broker the material for them. Whether your shredding company goes mill-direct or uses a recycler to broker your paper, developing a relationship with the companies involved in the transaction is inevitable. Of course, exceptions do apply, as in the cases of recyclers that have document destruction divisions and paper mills that have vertically integrated into the recycling and document destruction arenas.

The shredding is the easy part. But marketing the resulting material can be more difficult and depend on a number of factors, including consumer specifications, location, type of shredding system and the paper grades produced at the destined mill. Maintaining these partnerships in the paper chain is as reliant on communication as on the quality of the shredded paper bales. Of the possibilities, using a recycler to act as the middleman between a shredding company and a paper mill can be an attractive avenue for a shredding company.

From the vantage point of owning Rohn Industries, St. Paul, Minn., the second largest recycling company in the Twin Cities area, Ron Mason says he considers shear volume an asset a document destruction firm might want to consider when seeking a recycler. According to Mason, although plant-based Shred Right comprises only 10 percent of his St. Paul, Minn.-based recycling company, it is the largest shredding service by volume in the area. "Shredding companies, typically low volume, would do well to develop a relationship with a paper processor to leverage price premiums and mill relationships," Mason says, enabling the shredding firms to take advantage of the recycler’s economies of scale.

Longevity in the business also helps. Iowa City, Iowa-based City Carton Recycling established Document Destruction and Recycling Services (DDRS) as an affiliate in Cedar Rapids 11 years ago. The young company, with the help of an intermediating broker, was able to follow the well-traveled path laid down by parent company City Carton. Les Etscheidt, DDRS operations manager, says, "It’s nice on my end to say we have a load ready and the broker takes care of it. A well-established 40-year-old business with a good reputation doesn’t have to do much marketing."

The volume of material City Carton moves augments the opportunities on the document destruction side of the business, not necessarily by marketing more product to mills, says City Carton Recycling Manager and DDRS Division Manager Chris Ockenfels, but by increasing the number of mills the company can market to and contract with. "And recyclers can handle mixed loads. They can hold for full loads of each individual grade. With available space, shredding companies can do the same," Ockenfels says. "Large volume helps with pricing, as well."

A mill-direct arrangement, once established, is well worth maintaining, according to some shredding firm operators. Jack Gerblick, president of Atlanta-based Peachtree Secure Shredding Inc., says he is content with the three-year relationship he’s developed with a paper mill. "We have a great relationship with our mill," he says. "They know what we produce and are more than happy with it."

With experience in both realms, Chris Kelley at DataChambers in Winston-Salem, N.C., has discovered in just one year of business that he prefers collaborating with a number of recyclers than with paper mills because of their accessibility, flexibility and overall customer service. Kelley says the recyclers’ locations are more convenient for DataChambers, while the mills are very stringent on schedules. "We rely heavily on the flexibility of our recyclers," he says. "If a load is not ready, they are [accepting] of delays."

A degree of flexibility can be a blessing when a company has to address varied customer needs while also making a product acceptable to the needs of various mills without uniform standards to follow.

"It’s kind of a gray area right now," Mason says. "There’s no mill spec as to paper size, but if we shred too finely, it won’t hold together in a bale. It flakes off and falls everywhere."

Shred Right’s cross-cut paper shredders produce a 2-inch-diameter particle size. "The finer you shred, the more harm you do to fiber content," Mason adds.

The Paper Stock Industries (PSI) chapter of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) offers general standards, but Ockenfels notes they aren’t used uniformly by mills. "Some [mills] can handle more glues than others, some, more groundwood, depending on type of equipment and application of the fiber."

How the paper is picked up and shredded is often how it’s sold, Etscheidt says. "We don’t want to handle it anymore than necessary." He adds that DDRS classifies its shredded paper as either sorted office paper (SOP) or sorted office waste (SOW), which allows for a higher level of contamination.

At the onset of collaboration, DataChambers invites recyclers to visit its plant and view its process and the bales it’s producing, Kelley says, to "be sure we produce what we say before they send the truck over."

In an industry that promises the security of a customers’ confidential information, which often means minimal contact with the documents in question, occasional contaminants are inevitable and can take many forms.

Etscheidt of DDRS says, "If something falls in the pit that may grossly cause a problem, we try to retrieve it." While he says such contaminants are not a frequent problem, nonetheless, he has occasionally seen pop bottles, food, food containers and even IV tubing. "Reeducating the customer is the only recourse when contamination with garbage is the problem," he adds.

Groundwood, glue and plastic are the less exotic contaminants that can slip though the system during processing. These contaminants, or dye from a handful of colored paper assumed to be all white, and poor bale integrity are the major reasons why a shredded paper bale might be rejected by a mill.

Gerblick, who says he has never had a bale rejected, tries to keep metal, plastic and cardboard contaminants below 5 percent.

"Any efforts toward minimizing contamination will ensure an ongoing relationship and payment for each load of shredded material or bales," Kelley says.

While presorting of paper prior to shredding is an option for plant-based shredder operators, at the end of the shredding process, sorting is a costly alternative. Post-shred optical sorting systems are not widely used, Ockenfels says, and are intended for large scale operations. At the same time, most shredding companies don’t sort material prior to shredding, with their primary focus being on security.

Though clean, dense bales derive the best price, most shredders don’t want to add sorting labor because of the cost, but also, Etscheidt says, because they don’t want to be perceived as constantly handling their customers’ material.

Instead, DDRS sorts customers. The company divides customers into two groups: those that receive bins for white to off-white paper destined for paper mills producing high-grade products and those whose higher ratio of color paper make their shredded material suitable for low-grade paper products. Periodically, reeducation is needed for customers that mix in the occasional contaminant, he adds.

Unlike cardboard, a shredded paper bale doesn’t retain memory. "It’ll shift like a sock full of sand," Ockenfels says, "adjusting its shape to the pressure on it." Such bales, potentially stacked six or seven high in the mill, may fall over. To ensure bale integrity, Ockenfels suggests that destruction firms increase the density of their bales.

Rather than use auto-tie balers, Kelley says he finds the manual version more reliable for bale compression. He recommends that operators learn the nuances of their balers to maximize density. "The tying process is key to a tight bale," he says.

Companies that have developed a closed network for materials exchange are generally content with the setup.

However, it doesn’t necessarily pay to avoid looking outside of these relationships. Mason suggests that secure shredding companies go back to the marketplace to talk to competitors, perhaps twice per year, to be sure their relationships are still beneficial to both parties involved.

Although Kelley says it is wise to periodically play the shop card, he warns, "But if you’re always going after the highest price, chances are when the markets turn the other way, moving materials and getting decent pricing will be difficult."

Mills want consistent volumes of quality bales. Likewise, providers need to be paid on time, Gerblick, says. "It’s a two-way relationship."

Above all, the main ingredient to include in each delivery is honesty about its contents. Shredders might be tempted to maximize the value of their material by not being up front, Mason says. A mill knows nothing of the shredding company whose material Rohn mixes in to the paper bales it’s providing. So if a problem shuts the mill down, it only has Rohn Industries to blame for the shedder’s deception.

Document Destruction and Recycling Services’ trump card is parent company City Carton Recycling’s proven track record, built upon years of honest, ethical, open communications, Ockenfels says. "Be honest with yourself and the broker about the quality of material as to what contaminants are in it so brokers can move it to the right location," he says. "If the No. 1 thing you’re concerned about is price, then you will only be dealing with people that are marketing pricing. People that build honest, long-term relationships, don’t talk about price, they give one fair monthly price which changes according to the markets."

Kelley says, "Like any other business relationship, the more you put in, the more you get out down the road. It’s got to be ethical. Do what you say you’re going to do."