Tom Malone is in a “commoditized” business ”“ one where he”™s traded suit-and-tie for a hardhat and construction coat.
And, you could say that his work locally is chipping away at the global trade deficit.
At the helm of family recycling business Brookfield Resource Management Inc. now for eight years, Malone ”“ who worked in financial services for 10 years ”“ has taken the operation to new heights in both modernization and scope.
Last summer, Brookfield completed the first phase of a 35,000-square-foot, $3.8-million operations center at its Elmsford headquarters, to move a majority of processing indoors. Construction on the second phase of the facility will begin this year.
The company just closed on a purchase of a 48-acre cornfield in Wawayanda for an undisclosed amount, to build a regional recycling facility that will house a scrap metal shredding operation.
“We liked the logistics up there,” Malone said. “It is located one mile from Exit 3 on Interstate 84. We”™ve been in the process for a couple of years now of permitting that facility to eventually develop it as a regional recycling processing center.”
Work in Wawayanda comes following Brookfield receiving site-plan approval for planned improvements at a nine-acre Cortlandt scrap metal recycling facility.
The company bought the site in February 2009 to expand its service area into Putnam and Dutchess counties.
The company just opened a facility overseas in India.
“It”™s a good end market for us, as is China and a lot of these emerging economies,” Malone said. “By opening a facility there, it will allow us to move material here from New York into India where we ship scrap steel and sell to steel mills.”
The next product Brookfield will introduce to India is scrap aluminum.
“By having a presence in the country, you gain a little margin that you”™re shipping into the end market.”
Brookfield was founded nearly 40 years ago, beginning first in Elmsford as a used-auto parts business.
Today, the bulk of the business is full-service recycling, processing a “significant amount of passenger and commercial vehicles as recyclables.”
Every item that passes Brookfield”™s way is bought, extracted and sold back in stripped-down form in the commodities market.
Everyday items such as refrigerators that are picked up by municipalities ”“ or metals collected from a construction company”™s dismantling a building ”“ are bought by Brookfield and go toward their recyclable pool.
“Our focus is on creating a market for these items because they have value,” Malone said. “Our business is processing that material and then selling it into the domestic and international markets for the steel, the aluminum, the copper, the brass, stainless steel.”
Brookfield Resource Management has operations in Chicago and the Bronx in addition to its India and lower-Hudson Valley facilities.
It”™s vital to grow geographically and where there is recyclable demand, he said.
Malone called the lower-Hudson Valley the company”™s core focus ”“ a “couple” more acquisitions are not out of question.
But, “a lot of our sales are international sales.”
