Lofty heights: Tri-R Recycling reaches market share peaks in the Rocky Mountains

Recycling Today, Sept, 2004 by Brian Taylor

TRI-R SYSTEMS CORP. AT A GLANCE

PRINCIPALS: David Powelson, CEO and founder (pictured at far left); Brad Heinrich, president of Tri-R Recycling (pictured, second from left); Mike Tingle, president of Tri-R Shredding (not pictured); Giles King, president of Secondary Fiber Inc. (not pictured)

LOCATIONS: Office and main processing plant in Denver; Colorado Springs Recycling and Waste business unit in Colorado Springs; two buy-back centers in metropolitan Denver; more than 1,400 drop-off locations for recyclables

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 140 for Tri-R Systems Corp. business units combined

PROCESSING EOUIPMENT: includes two American Baler/Lindemann balers; Vecoplan LLC shredding plant; Machinex OCC disc screen; additional small balers, book de-binder, roll cutting guillotine and alligator shear; 40-truck collection fleet; four mobile shredding trucks

SERVICES PROVIDED: Commercial recycling services; processing of residential recyclables; recycling programs for nonprofit organizations; secure document and product destruction services; material brokerage; solid waste and recycling collection (Colorado Springs); Internet-based information, shredding and recycling services

The mantra "of grow or die" follows around small business owners just as it does Fortune 500 corporate executives. Like many other start up business owners. David R. Powelson, CEO and founder of Tri-R Recycling. Denver, first had to survive some lean year before even being in a position to face the "grow or die" business phase.

But having made it through the survival stage, Powelson has assembled a leadership team at Tri-R that has helped turn the company into a growing regional powerhouse with subsidiaries and operations in several segments of the recycling, secure destruction and waste hauling industries.

A GROWING NEIGHBORHOOD. A visitor to Tri-R Recycling will see a company that has grown beyond its original land and building space to absorb adjacent properties in its neighborhood near downtown Denver.

Tri-R Recycling is, in fact, just one of five business units operating under the Tri-R Systems Corp. umbrella, along with Tri-R Shredding, DataGuard USA, Secondary Fiber Inc., and Colorado Springs Recycling and Waste.

The combined companies sort, bale and ship paper in the original plant, but also accept mixed residential recyclables, operate an outdoor sorting system, run a plant for confidential shredding, broker material shipments and supervise a variety of Internet-based companies with a national reach in the confidential shredding and recycling markets. Tri-R has recently purchased another building and its accompanying land to accommodate expansions in its shredding and municipal recycling segments.

Tri-R has steadily expanded the geographic range in which it operates, but its roots trace back to David Powelson's desire to start a one-stop neighborhood recycling center.

Powelson, a native of New York City, has lived in Colorado since the early 1970s. His background includes a bachelor's degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA degree from New York State's university system.

After gaining work experience with another recycling company, Powelson started Tri-R in 1977. The company struggled at times in its early years before embarking on several strategies that helped fuel steady growth, including designing office building recycling programs and moving into document destruction services to cater to the same office clientele.

While confidential shredding has helped bolster Tri-R's presence in commercial recycling, the company has not neglected its "neighborhood" recycling roots.

Individual residents' drop offs of recylables now make up just a small percentage of Tri-R's overall business, but collection trucks (both Tri-R's and those of other haulers) loaded with mixed recyclables feed an increasingly busy material recovery facility run by Tri-R. The company also manages some 1,400 collection points to bring in material from nonprofit organizations.

This curbside processing center, along with Tri-R's acquisition of Colorado Springs Recycling and Waste, has made the company a major processor of curbside recyclables along Colorado's front range.

That presence will grow by a huge leap in June of 2005, when Tri-R becomes the single-stream processor for residential material collected in the city and county of Denver. Tri-R is currently making processing equipment plans and purchases to handle the influx of residential curbside material.

The baled and shredded material processed by Tri-R's different business units is ultimately brought to market by the company's materials brokerage arm Secondary Fiber Inc.

This combination of business activities has resulted in a company with an impressive regional presence that operates a carefully monitored fleet of collection trucks; processing and sorting capacity--some inside and some outdoors--that has spread into a growing corporate campus complex; and an information, security and communications office infrastructure that connects Tri-R's business units as well as plugs the company into its regional and national markets.