Durbin Knows Paper Stock … And a Whole Lot More

There’s more to this company than its name implies. While paper is the focus of Durbin’s business, other commodities also play an essential role.

This Miami-headquartered fire with six processing plants, 10 domestic sales offices, agents in another 21 countries, and an equipment leasing division has strong roots in the scrap paper industry, but also processes and brokers scrap ferrous and nonferrous metals, plastics, and glass.

(Although the company was purchased last month [as we went to press] by hauling giant Waste Management Inc., operations are expected to continue as they have.)

The company made its entry into most of the materials it hadn't traditionally handled through commercial accounts. Plastics, for example, were offered years ago by some of the grocery stores where Durbin picked up corrugated. And ferrous scrap processing became part of the firm's capabilities when it purchased an existing industrial scrap processing facility in the Midwest.

The company, which traces its history to 1902, has been processing postconsumer scrap--mostly old newspaper (ONP)--since its start. Although much of the postconsumer paper that it's handled over the years has come from civic group newspaper drives and drop-off setups at apartment buildings and schools, Durbin has contracted directly with municipalities for these postconsumer materials since 1969, recounts Victor A. Storelli, Durbin's vice president.

A new recycling law in Florida--home to Durbin's Miami, Pompano Beach, Tampa, and Sarasota plants--has increased the importance of municipalities and postconsumer materials to the company. Today, according to Serge Storelli, the company's president and Victor's brother, postconsumer scrap accounts for 30 percent of Durbin's tonnage. He expects that number to grow to 50 percent within five years.

Adapting to the Law

In 1988, the Florida legislature passed a solid waste management law that, among other provisions, required each county in the state to initiate by July 1, 1989, a program to remove recyclables from the waste stream. It also targets 50-percent recovery rates for ONP and containers made of plastics, glass, and metals. In that same year, Durbin began preparing to play a role in the municipal programs resulting from the law.

One big step in its preparations was the hiring of a former Broward County, Fla., recycling office employee to act as municipal project director. Although the company has employed someone to work with postconsumer scrap accounts for 15 Years, it boosted its efforts in that area in January with the recruitment of Dana P. DeYoung, whose job it is to be a liaison to Florida municipalities that have or are considering curbside or drop-off programs. Other Durbin employees are responsible for marketing the company's services to municipalities near its Rock Island, M., and Winston-Salem, N.C., plants. Still others work with private groups such as offices interested in separating their paper, scout troops conducting aluminum can drives, and condominium associations hoping to reduce their disposal needs.

According to DeYoung, the Florida law places its recycling requirements on the counties. However, he says, many of the municipal programs aimed at collecting recyclables are run by cities and some of these are implemented by private waste haulers. Thus, to make the most of the law, Durbin has established accounts not only with the counties near its Florida plants, but also with the cities in those areas and the haulers serving the cities and counties. This can cause some confusion at the scale and in accounting, but DeYoung is working on implementing account identification cards for all 28 of the Florida municipalities it buys from and the haulers serving them.

Keeping Options Open

Because the law is being implemented in so many different ways, Durbin has been flexible in working with its accounts. It's a strategy the company has used throughout its history, beginning with its industrial accounts.

One example of this flexibility can be seen in the company's multi-year contracts, which guarantee a long-term market price for certain materials without requiring the account to sell only to Durbin. Of course, the company also works with accounts that don't want to make long-term commitments.

Durbin will also do what it can to adapt to an account's collection method. "We'll try to do it any way that makes the municipality happy," Serge says, whether that means accepting materials from drop-off centers or curbside collection programs, whether materials are delivered separated or commingled (the company has plans to update its facilities to handle commingled materials), even whether the account uses Durbin as a processor or just as a broker. "Whatever way they want to work it," he explains, "we'll make an arrangement."

Some of the municipalities and waste haulers are building or considering constructing facilities to process the scrap generated by the municipal programs, but that doesn't bother the people at Durbin. Even if those entities are successful at operating such facilities, DeYoung points out, "They don't have the expertise in the hard part-the markets. " It's Durbin's expertise and "credibility in the industry," says Victor, that attracted Waste Management to the company.

Buying and Selling Quality

Durbin is feeling some growing pains with the municipal programs, company officials say. The company's biggest problem in working with municipalities, Serge says, has been "getting them to understand that they are selling a commodity; whether they get paid for it or pay to have it removed, it's not garbage." This lack of understanding is evident in some material collectors who, for instance, can't comprehend why there's a deduction on contaminated or wet materials. This vital lesson may seem like a difficult one to instill, but remember that Durbin has someone devoted full time to working with municipalities and haulers on such issues.

Providing a quality product is important throughout the Durbin organization, particularly because of the implications it has on the company's relationships with its consumers. "Success in this industry comes from buying and preparing properly," Serge explains. "No consumer will stop buying from a good supplier." Victor elaborates on the importance of consumers: "You have to support your consumers through good times and bad."

What Durbin is looking for in return are consumers that are willing to support their dedicated scrap suppliers in good times and bad. In fact, a consumer's continuity of support is generally of higher value to the firm than price. "Finding a consumer that can use a product year in and year out is more important to us than getting a couple dollars more," says Victor. In the long run, he believes, continuous scrap movement will generate higher profits.

Making Consumer Deals

The Storelli family business has ensured the achievement of part of its goal for continuous support to and from its consumers in the form of long-term supply contracts with those recyclers. For instance, Durbin is an official Alcoa buyer for aluminum cans and, since 1978, has contracted to sell a minimum of 90,000 tons per year of ONP to Southeast Recycling Corp. (Marietta, Ga.).

The company works with a variety of local and export consumers for its other traditional scrap business and maintains a policy of supplying domestic buyers first. Traditional scrap handled includes lead-acid batteries, which the company began handling when an auto supply store-one of its corrugated customers-requested it, ferrous metals (processed only at the Illinois plant), and aluminum cast and extrusions and copper, which Durbin processes only at its plants that have the necessary security.

Durbin's color-separated glass (which it crushes at some of its plants for ease of transport) and baled, commingled polyethylene terephthalate soda bottles and high-density polyethylene milk and water jugs also are sold to a number of outlets. For the Miami plant, the primary buyer is a private buyback center operated by New Jersey-based Pace Glass, according to DeYoung, who notes that the buyback center sells all of the newspaper and aluminum it buys to Durbin.

Working for Success

Whatever Durbin's strategy, it seems to be on target. Between processing and brokering, the company moves 500,000 to 756,000 tons of paper and approximately 100,000 tons of other scrap every year.

Ask the people who run the firm why they think it's prospered and the answers will reveal a corporate concern for the total picture: from finding and keeping the right employees (today the company employs more than 150 people), to paying a fair price, to emphasizing marketing and management. Vice President Dominick Storelli, who manages all domestic nonmetallic sales, calls those last items "Durbin's forte--we are sticklers for good marketing and management."

One other answer runs through all of their responses: perseverance. "We're willing to stick with a project, to make personal sacrifices," Serge says. "The guy who really works with his company through sweet and rough times is going to make it.”

Looking Beyond This Time and Place

With a successful history, in its background and declining market prices for secondary fibers in its present, what might Durbin's future hold in store?

Although its acquisition by Waste Management might have some effect on Durbin's expansion plans, the Storellis and other Durbin managers will continue to work toward building the firm.

One area of expansion for paper, Dominick says, is increasing international consuming contacts. More specifically, says Stephen J. Vento, Durbin's vice president for sales and manager of all but the Far Eastern portion of the company's export sales, "Eastern Europe might be the next growth area." Once their economies and politics stabilize, he predicts, Eastern European countries will need secondary fiber to supply increased demand for finished products. And Durbin wants to be prepared to open its own sales offices there if warranted, Vento says.

The company is looking into geographical expansion a little closer to home as well. George Silver, the company's vice president in charge of metal sales, is examining establishment of a nonferrous scrap processing plant in the Caribbean through a partnership with a national government in the region. Most of the islands, he says, have few if any scrap processors, but plenty of available scrap.

On the domestic side, Victor says, "Florida is pretty well saturated.” The company operates a plant within 50 miles of every area in the state it considers to have a major population, he explains, so domestic processing expansion likely will be in other states.

Building on the Nonpaper Route

All of the company's "major expansions" will include if not emphasize nonpaper scrap, Serge says. "Today, when you put up a facility," Victor explains, "you need to cover all of the commodities.” That way, he says, when the market for one goes down, "at least you have the support of other products to keep the plant operating." Furthermore, Serge adds, the company's customers want to send Durbin these other materials, and "you have to be able to service your customers."

"We are total recyclers," nephew Dominick emphasizes, "and we will recycle anything that can be recycled. Wherever there's a need, we'll try to fill it.”

There’s more to this company than its name implies. While paper is the focus of Durbin’s business, other commodities also play an essential role.

This Miami-headquartered fire with six processing plants, 10 domestic sales offices, agents in another 21 countries, and an equipment leasing division has strong roots in the scrap paper industry, but also processes and brokers scrap ferrous and nonferrous metals, plastics, and glass.

(Although the company was purchased last month [as we went to press] by hauling giant Waste Management Inc., operations are expected to continue as they have.)

The company made its entry into most of the materials it hadn't traditionally handled through commercial accounts. Plastics, for example, were offered years ago by some of the grocery stores where Durbin picked up corrugated. And ferrous scrap processing became part of the firm's capabilities when it purchased an existing industrial scrap processing facility in the Midwest.

The company, which traces its history to 1902, has been processing postconsumer scrap--mostly old newspaper (ONP)--since its start. Although much of the postconsumer paper that it's handled over the years has come from civic group newspaper drives and drop-off setups at apartment buildings and schools, Durbin has contracted directly with municipalities for these postconsumer materials since 1969, recounts Victor A. Storelli, Durbin's vice president.

A new recycling law in Florida--home to Durbin's Miami, Pompano Beach, Tampa, and Sarasota plants--has increased the importance of municipalities and postconsumer materials to the company. Today, according to Serge Storelli, the company's president and Victor's brother, postconsumer scrap accounts for 30 percent of Durbin's tonnage. He expects that number to grow to 50 percent within five years.

Adapting to the Law

In 1988, the Florida legislature passed a solid waste management law that, among other provisions, required each county in the state to initiate by July 1, 1989, a program to remove recyclables from the waste stream. It also targets 50-percent recovery rates for ONP and containers made of plastics, glass, and metals. In that same year, Durbin began preparing to play a role in the municipal programs resulting from the law.

One big step in its preparations was the hiring of a former Broward County, Fla., recycling office employee to act as municipal project director. Although the company has employed someone to work with postconsumer scrap accounts for 15 Years, it boosted its efforts in that area in January with the recruitment of Dana P. DeYoung, whose job it is to be a liaison to Florida municipalities that have or are considering curbside or drop-off programs. Other Durbin employees are responsible for marketing the company's services to municipalities near its Rock Island, M., and Winston-Salem, N.C., plants. Still others work with private groups such as offices interested in separating their paper, scout troops conducting aluminum can drives, and condominium associations hoping to reduce their disposal needs.

According to DeYoung, the Florida law places its recycling requirements on the counties. However, he says, many of the municipal programs aimed at collecting recyclables are run by cities and some of these are implemented by private waste haulers. Thus, to make the most of the law, Durbin has established accounts not only with the counties near its Florida plants, but also with the cities in those areas and the haulers serving the cities and counties. This can cause some confusion at the scale and in accounting, but DeYoung is working on implementing account identification cards for all 28 of the Florida municipalities it buys from and the haulers serving them.

Keeping Options Open

Because the law is being implemented in so many different ways, Durbin has been flexible in working with its accounts. It's a strategy the company has used throughout its history, beginning with its industrial accounts.

One example of this flexibility can be seen in the company's multi-year contracts, which guarantee a long-term market price for certain materials without requiring the account to sell only to Durbin. Of course, the company also works with accounts that don't want to make long-term commitments.

Durbin will also do what it can to adapt to an account's collection method. "We'll try to do it any way that makes the municipality happy," Serge says, whether that means accepting materials from drop-off centers or curbside collection programs, whether materials are delivered separated or commingled (the company has plans to update its facilities to handle commingled materials), even whether the account uses Durbin as a processor or just as a broker. "Whatever way they want to work it," he explains, "we'll make an arrangement."

Some of the municipalities and waste haulers are building or considering constructing facilities to process the scrap generated by the municipal programs, but that doesn't bother the people at Durbin. Even if those entities are successful at operating such facilities, DeYoung points out, "They don't have the expertise in the hard part-the markets. " It's Durbin's expertise and "credibility in the industry," says Victor, that attracted Waste Management to the company.

Buying and Selling Quality

Durbin is feeling some growing pains with the municipal programs, company officials say. The company's biggest problem in working with municipalities, Serge says, has been "getting them to understand that they are selling a commodity; whether they get paid for it or pay to have it removed, it's not garbage." This lack of understanding is evident in some material collectors who, for instance, can't comprehend why there's a deduction on contaminated or wet materials. This vital lesson may seem like a difficult one to instill, but remember that Durbin has someone devoted full time to working with municipalities and haulers on such issues.

Providing a quality product is important throughout the Durbin organization, particularly because of the implications it has on the company's relationships with its consumers. "Success in this industry comes from buying and preparing properly," Serge explains. "No consumer will stop buying from a good supplier." Victor elaborates on the importance of consumers: "You have to support your consumers through good times and bad."

What Durbin is looking for in return are consumers that are willing to support their dedicated scrap suppliers in good times and bad. In fact, a consumer's continuity of support is generally of higher value to the firm than price. "Finding a consumer that can use a product year in and year out is more important to us than getting a couple dollars more," says Victor. In the long run, he believes, continuous scrap movement will generate higher profits.

Making Consumer Deals

The Storelli family business has ensured the achievement of part of its goal for continuous support to and from its consumers in the form of long-term supply contracts with those recyclers. For instance, Durbin is an official Alcoa buyer for aluminum cans and, since 1978, has contracted to sell a minimum of 90,000 tons per year of ONP to Southeast Recycling Corp. (Marietta, Ga.).

The company works with a variety of local and export consumers for its other traditional scrap business and maintains a policy of supplying domestic buyers first. Traditional scrap handled includes lead-acid batteries, which the company began handling when an auto supply store-one of its corrugated customers-requested it, ferrous metals (processed only at the Illinois plant), and aluminum cast and extrusions and copper, which Durbin processes only at its plants that have the necessary security.

Durbin's color-separated glass (which it crushes at some of its plants for ease of transport) and baled, commingled polyethylene terephthalate soda bottles and high-density polyethylene milk and water jugs also are sold to a number of outlets. For the Miami plant, the primary buyer is a private buyback center operated by New Jersey-based Pace Glass, according to DeYoung, who notes that the buyback center sells all of the newspaper and aluminum it buys to Durbin.

Working for Success

Whatever Durbin's strategy, it seems to be on target. Between processing and brokering, the company moves 500,000 to 756,000 tons of paper and approximately 100,000 tons of other scrap every year.

Ask the people who run the firm why they think it's prospered and the answers will reveal a corporate concern for the total picture: from finding and keeping the right employees (today the company employs more than 150 people), to paying a fair price, to emphasizing marketing and management. Vice President Dominick Storelli, who manages all domestic nonmetallic sales, calls those last items "Durbin's forte--we are sticklers for good marketing and management."

One other answer runs through all of their responses: perseverance. "We're willing to stick with a project, to make personal sacrifices," Serge says. "The guy who really works with his company through sweet and rough times is going to make it.”

Looking Beyond This Time and Place

With a successful history, in its background and declining market prices for secondary fibers in its present, what might Durbin's future hold in store?

Although its acquisition by Waste Management might have some effect on Durbin's expansion plans, the Storellis and other Durbin managers will continue to work toward building the firm.

One area of expansion for paper, Dominick says, is increasing international consuming contacts. More specifically, says Stephen J. Vento, Durbin's vice president for sales and manager of all but the Far Eastern portion of the company's export sales, "Eastern Europe might be the next growth area." Once their economies and politics stabilize, he predicts, Eastern European countries will need secondary fiber to supply increased demand for finished products. And Durbin wants to be prepared to open its own sales offices there if warranted, Vento says.

The company is looking into geographical expansion a little closer to home as well. George Silver, the company's vice president in charge of metal sales, is examining establishment of a nonferrous scrap processing plant in the Caribbean through a partnership with a national government in the region. Most of the islands, he says, have few if any scrap processors, but plenty of available scrap.

On the domestic side, Victor says, "Florida is pretty well saturated.” The company operates a plant within 50 miles of every area in the state it considers to have a major population, he explains, so domestic processing expansion likely will be in other states.

Building on the Nonpaper Route

All of the company's "major expansions" will include if not emphasize nonpaper scrap, Serge says. "Today, when you put up a facility," Victor explains, "you need to cover all of the commodities.” That way, he says, when the market for one goes down, "at least you have the support of other products to keep the plant operating." Furthermore, Serge adds, the company's customers want to send Durbin these other materials, and "you have to be able to service your customers."

"We are total recyclers," nephew Dominick emphasizes, "and we will recycle anything that can be recycled. Wherever there's a need, we'll try to fill it.”