Fresh Perspective

Josh Gensic

Director of procurement at Audubon Metals

Josh Gensic was first exposed to the scrap industry about 15 years ago when his future father-in-law invited him to tour Audubon Metals. The Henderson, Kentucky, company is an affiliate of Koch Enterprises Inc., which is headquartered in Evansville, Indiana. Audubon recycles about half a billion pounds of nonferrous scrap metal per year.

“I just remember being completely blown away by the huge piles of scrap, the heavy equipment, the machinery everywhere and the recycling process in general,” Gensic says. “Seeing a pile of what looked to me at the time was junk be turned into finished products was amazing and something I had never seen up close before.”

Although he says the tour was intriguing, Gensic was still in school at the time and had no intention of joining the scrap industry.

Upon graduating from Oakland City University in Oakland City, Indiana, with a business degree, he helped run his family’s furniture store business in Evansville, quickly realizing he didn’t want to stay in that business forever.

After hunting for human resources-related jobs in Evansville and having no luck, Gensic remembered his tour of Audubon Metals.

“I asked [my father-in-law] if he could pass on my resume to anyone he knew in the business that was looking for a hungry, recent college graduate.”

That resulted in Mark Kolb, owner of Quantum Metals in Lebanon, Ohio, offering Gensic a spot in that company’s management training program in 2008. Gensic has held a few other positions in the industry, including with David J. Joseph Co. and his current employer, Audubon Metals, working his way up over the past decade. As director of procurement, Gensic secures raw materials for the company.

“[Improving] sortation technologies to make segregated packages would keep a lot more material here in the U.S.”

Recycling Today (RT): What’s it like to work at Audubon Metals? Is the company working on anything new?

Josh Gensic (JG): In terms of culture, Audubon has a safety-first mentality. Every meeting we have starts off with a safety message, which is followed by quality and then environmental. Audubon is also entrepreneurial in nature—by this I mean managers are given a lot of freedom.

As far as projects, we have a really exciting one going on right now as Audubon continues to grow. We’re very close to commissioning our new plant, which is located in Corsicana, Texas. This plant will be similar to our existing one in Henderson, which will be processing zorba, selling twitch and other items and also producing specification aluminum alloys.

RT: What are some challenges you see the recycling industry facing today?

JG: I would say the latest challenge for us all in this industry is the trucking side of things ... . We’ve known for many years that the driver shortage was imminent. This has been amplified through the COVID pandemic. Every trucking company that we’ve talked to has equipment that is just sitting due to a lack of drivers. They’re also struggling to retain their current drivers.

RT: What new equipment do you hope to see the industry embrace?

JG: I would like to see better fluff processing technologies. Currently, most [fluff] producers have to pay to get rid of it, and it’s going to a landfill. People are trying to figure out how to convert [fluff] to a fuel or something that’s environmentally friendly. I’d like to see that technology improve. It would be a major step forward for our industry.

I’d also like to see continued improvements in mixed alloy separation technologies. [Improving] sortation technologies to make segregated packages would keep a lot more material here in the U.S.