Huge auto, metal recycling plant opens in county

"This is really the culminating moment for Pacific," President and CEO Ray Wahlert said in describing the ribbon cutting ceremony and open house for their new recycling and shredding facility in Elmore County.

The facility utilizes cutting-edge industrial technology with a "green twist," he said.

The $16 million dollar facility became operational six weeks ago, with a 24-person employee base working 16-hour shifts for shredding crews and eight-hour shifts for maintenance staff.

A featured state-of-the-art machine that the plant is built around is the "Shredder," a machine that costs $6.5 million dollars, purchased from Metso Texas Shredder. In the United States, there are 225 shredders but the one in Elmore County is the only one located in Idaho.

The machine is 99 percent accurate at producing clean, separated material, thus reducing the need for mining additional virgin metals, saving energy and other natural resources, according to the company's official web site.

The shredder starts with a mixture of commercial salvage, such as automobiles, appliances and compressed steel logs.

The material makes its way up a conveyer belt, then gets struck by large rotating hammers that strike the material with force great enough to fragment into pieces, until the fragments are small enough to be separated into individual elements--using blowers that separate the non-essential material and magnets that separate various metals.

The metals are broken down into three components, ferrous (steel), non-ferrous (aluminum, copper, brass, stainless steel) and non-metallic.

The ferrous metals are removed by the magnets, while the non-ferrous metals are removed by "reverse magnetism." The non-metallic material would end up as landfill.

A car is approximately 70 percent steel, 5 percent non-ferrous material, and 25 percent non-metallic.

Currently out in the plant, there is a total of 30,000 tons of raw material (it comes from an 800-mile radius), in the six weeks that the facility has been open, they averaged about 1,000 tons of recycled material in one day.

One recycled pile is equivalent to 3,500 automobiles or 70,000 appliances.

Once the material is recycled, it is taken by rail car to NuCore, a plant in Plymouth, Utah. From there the material is melted down into rebar, angle irons, flat bars, etc. The material will later be put up for sale at a Pacific steel facility.

The railway system would also take the material to wherever Pacific has buyers.

At the current rate of production, Pacific can process 12 railcars of material every day. Each railcar represents 100 tons of material that doesn't end up in landfills or need to come from virgin ore.

Before Wahlert (joined by members of the Pacific board of directors) cut the ribbon, he praised his employees, saying, "without their hard work and dedication, none of this would be possible."

Wahlert also acknowledged several key staff members: Pat Dooley for his effort in keeping the shredder operational and maintained; Mike Cataldo (branch manager of Boise/Nampa scrap operations) for his knowledge of shredders and for their work on the project, and Bill Knick and Jeff Millhollin.

Wahlert also recognized the businesses that made the plant possible, including Hansen Rice, Knife River, Anderson Wood, Gem Contractors, Total Scale Services, Idaho Power, West Rail, Idaho Waste Systems, Crown Industrial and Metso Texas Shredder.

Wahlert also recognized the officials of Elmore County for their belief in the business, granting all the permits and helping to get the project started.

County Commissioner Connie Cruser, Bonnie Sharp, director of the Elmore County Growth and Development Department, and Elmore County Sheriff Rick Layher shared the same sentiment on the new facility.

"I'm very impressed. I think it was fascinating to get a glimpse of the recycling process," said Cruser

"We had no idea it would look this nice. I think everyone here has done an excellent job. They lived up to their conditional use permit in every way. I'm really impressed," said Sharp.

"It looks like quite an interesting operation, it looks like it's going to be a good thing for Elmore County," said Layher.

Guests of the event was given an opportunity to tour the facility and watch an automobile getting recycled. Following the tour, Pacific organized a raffle with prizes including jackets, backpacks and fleece vests.

In assuring that no one was going to be left empty handed, the staff also gave away Pacific knives, thermos and magnets to each guest.

Pacific is headquartered in Great Falls, Mont., and has 38 branch offices in Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana.

Pacific is the region's largest steel service center and scrap metals recycler with nine steel service centers, 18 steel distribution centers and 27 recycling centers throughout the northern Rocky Mountains and northern plains.