Keeping up with the flow

Construction and demolition (C&D) recycling facility development has experienced some interesting movement over the last two years. Many facilities have enjoyed a positive couple of years, leaving the recession of a few years’ prior in the dust.

This bounceback in construction activity has provided an opportunity for some new players to enter the business. Other companies have continued to grow in certain regions by acquiring facilities, and a few have left the industry, taking some competition out of the mix.

NEW IN TOWN

Among the new facilities that have entered the business are Town & Country Environmental Services, which services the Dallas-Fort Worth market with its Cellina, Texas, C&D facility. It opened in summer 2015 to huge success.

The Dane County landfill, located in Madison, Wisconsin, opened a new $5.2 million facility in early 2016. Another new player in the Midwest is LEDR Recycling, St. Charles, Missouri. It debuted its new 35,000-square-foot C&D material recovery facility (MRF) in 2015, becoming the first facility in Missouri to make Construction & Demolition Recycling’s list of high-volume mixed C&D recycling, which we began publishing every two years beginning in 2010.

In 2010, 124 facilities were operating in the U.S. Six years later we’ve counted 156 high-volume mixed C&D facilities, which we identify as having processing equipment that allows them to separate materials at several tons per hour. The number of facilities shows a slight drop from the 160 facilities listed in 2014.

GAINING MARKET SHARE

Waste Management Recycle America (WMRA), has ceased operations in at a few of its facilities, but continues to collect and process C&D materials in Hillsboro, Oregon; Taunton, Massachusetts; Los Angeles, San Jose, San Leandro, Sun Valley, California; Brown Deer, Wisconsin; and Tampa. In addition, the Houston-based firm acquired the assets of Davie, Florida-based Southern Waste Systems/Sun Recycling in December 2015, which includes six C&D recycling facilities in South Florida.

Lakeshore Recycling has shut out some of the competition in the Chicago area with acquisitions of Heartland Recycling in June 2014 and Northbrook, Illinois-based C&D Recycling in March. LRS now has the ability to process 2 million tons of waste material annually, more than any other privately held company in Illinois.

As for the future development of C&D recycling facilities in the U.S., and future lists C&DR publishes in the coming years. It will be interesting to see if the trends continue. For now, larger companies are gaining market share in strategic locations, while entrepreneurs continue to seize opportunities to develop an underserved markets.

Research and verification assistance provided by Hilary Crisan, assistant editor, Construction & Demolition Recycling.