Hanging Tough

Watching his recycling plant go up in flames more than a decade ago was disheartening for Joseph Colubriale, president of J.C. Fibers Inc., Chambly, Quebec, Canada.

And although the life-long recycler acknowledges that the setback cast him into a month-long depression, Colubriale bounced back, a trait that has helped him and his company not only weather tough times, but eventually prosper over them.

Often battling circumstances beyond his control, Colubriale and his wife, two sons and two daughters who are part of the family business have built one of the largest recycling firms in North America—one that shows no signs of pulling back from its growth trend.

LEARNING THE TRADE. Joseph Colubriale can trace his own recycling roots back to the mid-1960s, when he began working for Plotnick & Sons Limited’s plant in Montreal. Joe worked at the recycling facility through when it was purchased by the former Consolidated Fibres Inc., a Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI) subsidiary, in the early 1970s. He remained there after BFI sold the plant off to yet another company.

Successor companies that ran the Montreal recycling operation met with mixed results, but all ownership groups kept Joe on as the head of operations, and Colubriale was always eager to stay, at times declining assignments in other cities. The volatile employment situation—combined with the always-volatile secondary commodity markets—gave Joe a feel for the roller coaster ride that can result from a life spent in the recycling industry.

It was not until 1985 that Joe parted ways with his long-term employer. "I started my own company in late 1985," he recalls. "That first year, we recorded sales of $700,000 in the three months we operated, and things have been going up ever since."

Mixed in with the steady growth, however, have been lessons learned as the company has added to its service mix, spread to a new metropolitan region (Rochester, N.Y.) and suffered a major setback in 1989.

"I started the business from a small location in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu (near Montreal), but established myself in Chambly in late 1985," Joe says. "By 1989, we had added a fleet of trucks and we were well established, but we had a fire that year and the whole plant went down. I was depressed for a month and thought I wasn’t even going to get back into the business," he recalls. "But my children and I decided to get back in."

Getting back up and re-established was no easy task, says Joseph, and he credits much of his ability to do so to the loyalty of his customers. "After the fire, people called me from all over to see what they could do to help," he recalls. "From September of 1989 to March the next year, it was challenging trying to service clients without a facility."

Often, says Joe, his drivers "picked up paper just the same, but delivered it loose to the mill. This meant less money for my suppliers, but they still gave me that opportunity," he notes. Many printing plant suppliers let J.C. Fibers manage their scrap paper on site.

"It wasn’t easy in 1989 or 1990 for us," says Joe. The challenge of operating without a facility may have helped spur Joe, his wife Raffaela, his sons Frank, Domenic and Tony, his daughters Maria and Cathy and other key J.C. Fibers managers to drive the company toward growth beyond a replacement facility in Chambly and toward additional facilities and even into an additional regional market.

INTERNATIONAL SCOPE. The scrap paper boom of 1994 and early 1995, and the subsequent bust in late 1995, presented both opportunities and challenges to long-time recycling companies.

"In 1995, when the market went sky high, everybody ‘wakes up’ that paper is worth money," recalls Joe. "In the middle of that year, people were carrying OCC on their shoulders to me; they were getting $300 Canadian per ton. A lot of people started getting into the business, but before the year ended, a lot of those people closed up shop."

Joe notes that J.C. Fibers went from having $30 million Canadian in revenue in 1994 up to $52 million Canadian in 1995. "That’s because the paper prices went crazy. But then the next year it went down the same way."

J.C. Fibers took advantage of the additional cash flow by building a second recycling plant, this one in Montreal, and by reaching across the U.S. border to purchase an existing company, then known as Regional Recycling & Resource Recovery Inc., in Rochester, N.Y., which was added to the J.C. Fibers stable in 1994.

The purchase helped make J.C. Fibers truly an international company, although the Colubriales can also argue that their existing attention to export markets has always made their business international in nature.

A promotional videotape for the company notes that much of its scrap paper is shipped out from the Port of Montreal, which it calls North America’s "finest gateway to the ports of Europe."

In a letter to customers printed in a J.C. Fibers brochure, Joe remarks that, "Every week, shipments leave the Port of Montreal, bound for our overseas customers, who rely on the enormous North American potential to meet their specific needs."

AT THE CURB. Like many traditional paperstock dealers, J.C. Fibers has its strongest business base collecting from industrial and commercial scrap paper generators. But as the company has grown, it has been willing to expand its base in any direction that promises to be profitable.

The list of services offered by J.C. Fibers Group or its operating subsidiaries reads like a textbook outline of recycling industry practices: industrial, office and retail paper recycling services; curbside recycling services; solid waste services; secure document destruction services; paper roll and sheet distribution; and transportation services provided by a fleet of more than 80 trucks (including tractors, roll-off trucks, rear-load trucks, front-end-load trucks and side-load trucks) and more than 100 trailers serving eastern Canada and the eastern U.S. and the port locations found nearby.

The document destruction operations stemmed from requests for the service from Montreal’s banking and finance community and has grown to include health care and government clients.

"Our company serves 85 to 90 buildings operated by the Quebec provincial government," says Joe, "and we also pick up documents for federal buildings located in our service area." The government service contracts have allowed J.C. Fibers to establish a presence 175 miles to the northeast in Quebec City. A J.C. Fibers plant in the Quebec City area may well be on the horizon.

As part of its secure document destruction service, the plants that handle the confidential materials have established "safe rooms" where the documents are taken after being picked up. Employees in these work areas "have to be cleared by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to work in the plants handling that paper," says Joe.

The service, along with other recycling programs designed to efficiently serve high-rise buildings, has helped J.C. Fibers increase the amount of office paper grades it handles each year.

Another pivotal way of bolstering the amount of material it collects has been J.C. Fibers’ growing presence in the residential and curbside recycling service.

Their experience in serving logistically complex commercial and office clients allowed the Colubriales to feel somewhat comfortable entering the Montreal residential collection and processing market when that opportunity arose last year.

"Dealing with a large city administration is a lot different than dealing with a company," Joe acknowledges. "There is a lot of paperwork and a lot of quotes are involved, and I certainly did not want to invest more than $4 million Canadian on new curbside recycling side-loader trucks and then not get the contract."

Currently, the J.C. Fibers Montreal Inc. subsidiary processes residential recyclables from approximately half of the city of Montreal, collecting about 15,000 to 20,000 tons of recyclables annually from this source, Joe says.

J.C. Fibers is providing the service to the city at less than half the per-household rate charged by the company that formerly held the contract. "[Making it work] is something it took me awhile to figure out, but now that I did, I’m glad I did," Joe says modestly.

THE NEXT GENERATION. Before starting his own recycling company nearly 20 years ago, Joe Colubriale spent two decades learning the business as someone else’s employee. "From 1966 to 1985, I got some important experience," Joe remarks. In addition to gaining industry knowledge in terms of buying, selling and processing material, Joe says he also learned a great deal about dealing with people.

"I like to respect people for this critical reason: When you respect people, you can only get back respect," he states. "When you try to be smart with people, then they try to be smart with you. This is my philosophy. In order for someone to say ‘good morning’ to you, you have to say ‘good morning’ to other people."

Joe says his outlook has helped him build and retain a loyal base of customers from the outset. "When I went into business for myself, nearly all of the people I served when working for CFI came back to me when I started in the form of J.C. Fibers."

Likewise, he praises his suppliers and customers for their loyalty to him after the 1989 fire at what was J.C. Fibers’ only plant at the time. As noted earlier, suppliers and customers stayed with J.C. Fibers through the difficulties. Joe says, "This was because of the way I treated them as a service provider."

Joe points to friendly, reliable service as well as reliable payment for materials as keys to customer happiness. "I pay my suppliers," he states. "I tell them they’ll be paid every 30 days, and they get the check every 30 days. They have no desire to change." He equates his methods to an old country proverb: "Give me the egg and give it to me today, don’t promise me the chicken a month from now."

In this way, Joe is able to procure material within a highly competitive market in light of its payment reputation. "Reputation is important," says Joe. "People keep coming to me because of our reputation for prompt payment every 30 days."

The legacy of the J.C. Fibers reputation is something that Joe is now beginning to put into the hands of his sons and daughters and other key people within the J.C. Fibers organization.

"My oldest son Frank will take over for me one day," says Joe of his current vice president. "And my younger son Tony is taking care of administration." Additionally, Joe’s oldest daughter Maria serves as a executive secretary and and his younger daughter Cathy stays involved in the business for special projects, such as export development, while currently raising her child.

"They pretty much started with me as I started my own company," Joe says of his children. "They see me and learn what to do and what not to do and not to make the same mistakes twice," he continues. "They know to be nice to everyone. For a business to continue, you have to be a good coach, to keep employees motivated."

Currently, Joe is spending most of the fall and winter at his winter home in Miami while allowing Frank, Tony, Maria and other J.C. Fibers managers the chance to expand their overall responsibilities.

Joe is confident the business will be in sound hands in the future, an outlook that is easier to maintain because of his belief in the basic goodness of most people. "You have good people and bad, but most are good," he declares.

He adds that when J.C. Fibers takes pride in the service it provides to customers operating in good faith, that service is rewarded with long-term relationships and commitments.

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted via e-mail at btaylor@RecyclingToday.com.