Stepping It Up

Enviro Shred, LaPorte, Ind., has come a long way since Mike Friedrich started the secure document destruction company in 1995.

Back then, Friedrich was running the document destruction operation solo, processing a few thousand pounds of shredded paper per week. Today, he processes an average of 20 tons of shredded paper per week with the help of his four additional staff members.

Friedrich attributes most of his company’s growth to its customer base and the way it conducts business. "We treat all customers, big and small, the same," Friedrich says.

The company’s growth also can be attributed to the variety of services it provides customers. Enviro Shred offers plant-based and mobile shredding services as well as a drop-off option. "We try to cover all the bases for our customers," Friedrich says. In terms of which service brings in the most business, Friedrich replies, "About 90 percent of our business is plant based and the other 10 percent is mobile based."

As business has grown, so has Enviro Shred’s need for more efficient and productive baling equipment.

In the late ’90s Friedrich purchased a closed-door, manual-tie baler to handle the company’s growing amount of incoming material. However, the more customers Enviro Shred gained, the harder it was for the closed-door baler to keep up.

"We were getting to a point where the closed-door, manual-tie baler just wasn’t paying off anymore," Friedrich says. "In this industry minimal downtime is critical." When the 10-year-old baler started breaking down more frequently and the repair costs got to be more than the machine’s actual worth, Friedrich says he knew it was time for an upgrade.

In June 2008 Enviro Shred added a horizontal auto-tie baler from American Baler, Bellevue, Ohio. "We went with American Baler because the company makes quality balers and provides service in our area," Friedrich says. But deciding on the size and type of baler to purchase wasn’t as easy as choosing the equipment supplier.

When purchasing a baler, it’s important to remember the goals a company wishes to accomplish with the machine. For instance, "We went with the auto-tie system because we wanted to speed up the baling process," Friedrich says.

For a secure document destruction company just starting out, Friedrich does not recommend purchasing an auto-tie baling system. The reason he cites is that the amount of material such a company processes probably does not justify the cost of purchasing such a baler. "They should start out with a manual-tie system and work their way up to an auto-tie system," Friedrich advises new entrants to the destruction field.

Along with speed, Friedrich was also looking for a baler that could increase productivity and offer larger bales. In the end he selected a horizontal baler because it can produce 70-inch long bales weighing 1,600 pounds each.

In addition to shredded paper, Enviro Shred’s horizontal baler is also capable of baling CDs, DVDs, microfilm and microfiche. "But we only bale this type of material when we have a large amount of it," Friedrich says. "About 99 percent of what we pick up is usually shreddable paper."

The entire process of removing Enviro Shred’s old baler and installing the new horizontal baler took a little more than two days. The process would have taken less time, Friedrich says, if it hadn’t been for a roadblock along the way.

From the beginning Friedrich says he was concerned about the baler’s physical size. The way the company’s nearly 5,000-square-foot building is set up, approximately 1,500 square feet is allocated to processing, with 1,500 square feet allocated for bale storage. "I knew from the beginning it was going to be a tight fit," Friedrich says.

During the installation process, Friedrich’s concerns were realized when it was discovered the baler was slightly wider than expected. "We found that the specs on the baler’s width were off by 2.5 inches," he says. "The only solution was to move the conveyor system forward and weld everything back in place. This added an extra eight to 10 hours of labor onto the project," Friedrich adds.

On the positive side, Friedrich says the horizontal baler is actually helping him gain storage space by producing fewer, heavier bales.

In the months since, Friedrich has taken note of the many benefits of Enviro

Now that the horizontal baler is up and running, Friedrich is focusing his attention on his next project, updating Enviro Shred’s shredder. Enviro Shred currently operates an AMS 4000 shredder from Ameri-Shred of Alpena, Mich. The shredder purchase is one of the reasons Friedrich selected a baler that could bale 8,000 to 9,000 pounds of material per hour, even though his current shredder can only shred a maximum of 4,000 pounds of material per hour. The baler’s maximum capacity will give him more freedom in terms of shredder size and speed when it is time for that purchase.

Friedrich says he also plans to add a new mobile truck to his fleet and to move to a new location, hopefully within the next year. But Friedrich says his timeframe really depends on market conditions, which are currently slowing down.

In today’s marketplace secure document destruction companies can do very little to combat the falling price of paper. "We are trying to produce more revenue through increased sales, but that’s about all we can do," Friedrich says.

In the meantime, Friedrich says it’s still business as usual for Enviro Shred. And since adding the horizontal auto-tie baler to his operation, Friedrich says Enviro Shred has been running more smoothly and efficiently.

The author is assistant editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at kmorris@gie.net. This feature originally ran in the November/December issue of Storage & Destruction Business magazine, a sister publication of Recycling Today.