A Bright Idea

Pictured from right are Countrywide Recycling Inc.’s partners, John Voortman, Joe Lopes, Marie Voortman and Dave Burtt. (Photo by  Philip Castleton)

When John Voortman thinks back to his days as a carpenter and a builder, he remembers being keenly aware of how much waste the construction industry produced.

“We always prided ourselves in using every last little bit of wood that we could, wherever we could,” recalls Voortman, who ran a small construction business in Hamilton and Niagara, Ontario, Canada, for 20 years. Many other builders, he says, were not doing that. “They were throwing away all kinds of good stuff at a big expense to builders.”

When his friend and business colleague Joe Lopes approached him about opening a C&D facility with him, he says, “I knew right away there was a lot of good waste, and we would be able to get a lot of good wood out of that.”

Lopes, who operated a stone delivery service and excavation company, came across an article on St. Paul, Minn.-based Shamrock Recycling in a Mack Truck magazine and decided to tour the facility to see if it was something that could be done in Hamilton. Voortman says Lopes came back from his trip excited at the prospect of opening a facility. Lopes asked Voortman to read the article, and told him he wanted him as a partner.

“That is when we went down to New England to check out a couple more plants, and then I got excited about it and it grew from there,” says Voortman. The two men toured New England Recycling (NER) in Maine and Thomson Brothers in North Andover, Mass. Both companies have processing systems from Continental Biomass Industries (CBI), Newton, N.H. Voortman and Lopes also saw CBI’s manufacturing plant and decided it should be the company to design and build the processing system for its new C&D recycling facility.

“We felt CBI’s equipment was the strongest equipment that we could get for the money,” says Voortman, who adds that they also looked at equipment at WasteExpo and searched online.
 

Becoming Reality
Countrywide Recycling Inc. opened its doors in April 2011. Voortman serves as vice president and general manager while Lopes is president and operations manager. Dave Burtt, Voortman’s business partner in his construction business, also joined on as plant manager, and Voortman’s wife Marie is office/account manager.

When the group bought the land for the facility from the City of Hamilton in 2007, there was a moratorium on waste sites that included the group’s 11.5-acre site. It took approximately six months to close the deal on the land. All the planning, site plan approvals and certificate of approval (C of A) took about one-and-one-half years. Then, it took one year to build the 60,000-square-foot facility.

“We received our first load in April of 2011, and we’ve been growing ever since,” says Voortman.

By December 2011, Voortman estimates Countrywide had more than 200 customers and counting. He says Countrywide is the only C&D recycling facility in Ontario that has an automated system for sorting and recycling material. “There are a lot of transfer stations that pull out some of the wood, but they don’t separate it like we do.”

Currently, Countrywide grinds up its clean wood to be used as a boiler fuel in greenhouses. Voortman says wood is a cost-effective alternative to natural gas for the large-scale greenhouses in Ontario that must keep temperatures near 95 degrees at all times.

Countrywide also is in negotiations to sell clean wood for use as bedding for trails and for mulch.

The company currently processes between 200 to 250 tons per day of material, but has the capability and approval to process up to 800 tons per day. “There is a lot of room there to go,” admits Voortman, but he is optimistic about the company’s growth. “We haven’t got a full year in yet. I am happy with the growth we are having right now.”

The pace at which the company is growing is just right, according to Voortman. “We are learning as we are growing. We are growing at a good pace to keep up with our learning curve.”

Since the company’s opening, it has already grown from 30 employees to 45. Voortman hopes to increase that to 65 employees by summer.
 

Border Interference
One of the reasons for locating in Hamilton was to get business from the many transfer stations that send their C&D debris into New York State, where it can be landfilled.

According to Voortman, much of the C&D material generated in Canada ends up in the U.S. Hauling companies and other potential customers can reduce their transportation costs by unloading material at Countrywide’s facility instead of hauling it into the U.S. Voortman says Countrywide tries to keep its tipping fees competitive.

Countrywide diverts about 65 percent of the material it receives from the waste stream, according to Voortman’s estimates. He hopes that number continues to improve. The materials the company does not recycle are going to a landfill in the U.S., since he says municipally owned landfills in Ontario do not accept C&D materials and privately owned C&D landfills in Canada tend to be more expensive than they are across the border.

According to Voortman, Hamilton is working on a sludge-to-energy plant that would be an ideal outlet for the overs the Countrywide plant produces. This would further help increase landfill diversion.
 

Hands-on Approach
Increasing diversion and intake of material isn’t the only way Countrywide is interested in growing. Voortman says the company wants to someday put in a truck maintenance shop for its trucks, which currently includes three tractor trailers, one rolloff truck, one hooklift truck, three walking floors and three dry van trailers. The company also has an estimated 75 bins in Southern Ontario to collect material.

Voortman says he and his partners are very hands-on with their business. It is not out of the ordinary to find Voortman on the picking line pulling out recyclables. “A 12-hour day is a short day for us owners. Usually it is 14 to 15 hours.”

But despite those long hours, you won’t find any complaints from Voortman who says, “I love it. It is an exciting business to be in.”

He says he shares the same attitude as his business partners of “don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today, because tomorrow something else might come up.” 

The author is associate editor of Construction & Demolition Recycling and can be reached at ksmith@gie.net.