Upstate Shredding Port of Albany Facility Takes Aim at Export

By John Packard

On Saturday, Upstate Shredding held an open house for their new Port of Albany, New York recycling and shipping facility.  What makes this one special is that the scrap operation sits on water which will provide the company with access to barge shipments to customers such as Nucor as well as ocean going Handymax vessels up to 32,000 tons which can deliver to foreign customers.

The new yard is fully paved, has new buildings, high-tech scales and processing equipment.  Adam Weitsman, president of Upstate Shredding told SMU the company currently does approximately 80,000 gross tons of ferrous scrap business and is looking for the addition of the Albany operation along with their brokerage business to expand their scrap footprint to 120,000 gross tons per month in 2014.

Upstate Shredding has a 10,000 horse power mega-shredder at their Owego facility and is looking to purchase a smaller shredder for the Albany location. The company told Steel Market Update they would most likely buy another Wendt 3000 horse power shredder similar to what they are installing at their New Castle, Pennsylvania facility. The company told SMU they already has permissions and permits in place for the equipment.

The company president has his eyes set on Turkey scrap buyers as well as those in India and the Far East. The number of tons the company is able to export will depend on market conditions. Upstate Shredding will be going into direct competition against SIMS and the company expects to increase their locations in order to compete even more effectively.

When asked what will make Upstate Shredding successful in both the domestic and export markets Mr. Weitsman told SMU, “I think that being the low cost, high volume lower margin operator is working for us. We continue to be profitable for past 28 quarters and are using revenue to expand and add locations where were currently are not getting much flow. We feel ferrous scrap prices will stay weak and are ready to operate and produce profitable tons at these price levels or lower.”

The Albany scrap yard is the first foray into the international scrap market. Besides the Albany yard Upstate Shredding operates 12 other yards in New York and Pennsylvania.