Harris Badger helps scrap firm bounce back from fire

Mike Rogers, the owner of Toledo, Ohio-based scrap recycling firm R&M Recycling Inc., encountered one of the worst situations any recycler has to face when a fire caused extensive damage to the company’s Toledo processing and warehouse facility.

The fire destroyed the firm’s two-ram baler and disrupted operations at the Toledo site, which is the largest of the three Ohio and Michigan facilities operated by R&M, which Rogers founded in 2000.

Rogers says what caused the fire was unclear, but what needed to be done was both obvious and challenging: to acquire a new baler and install it as quickly as possible to get the Toledo plant back up to full operational speed.

Rogers turned to his longtime equipment provider Ken Ely Jr. and Ely Enterprises, based in Lorain, Ohio. Ely, a Harris dealer, came to assess the damage two days after the fire and helped R&M navigate the insurance options as it prepared to re-equip.

Three weeks later, R&M ordered a Harris Badger, which was delivered and installed in the following 60 days. “We have bought several balers from Ely Enterprises over the years,” says Rogers, who credits the dealership for delivering “great results.”

The Harris Badger is a narrow-box, two-ram baler that has proven its worth to the global recycling industry as a cost-effective and reliable baler that also offers the flexibility required by processors of multiple materials such as R&M.

“Based on our material and the volume we bale, it was the right accommodation,” Rogers says of the Badger.

At its two feeder facilities in southern Michigan and at its flagship site in Toledo, R&M purchases materials ranging from obsolete and prompt ferrous scrap to bare bright copper to insulated wire and aluminum used beverage cans (UBCs).

For heavier materials, the Badger’s solid uni-body construction gives it the added strength and rigidity to compress such scrap grades and stand up to the challenge. On the operations side, the Badger features Harris’ multifunction touch-screen display, which shows pertinent up-to-the-second diagnostic and production information.

Rogers says his employees found the new baler “easy to adapt to,” and the rapid response by Harris and its dealer Ely Enterprises has prompted him to say he would “strongly recommend” the companies. One year after installation, R&M’s Harris Badger is on the job 40-to-50 hours per week, he says.

More information on the Badger and other world-renowned two-ram balers offered by Harris can be found at https://harrisequip.com/products/two-ram-balers.