Hamilton Scrap Processors has finished a “significant” expansion and improvement project to
make more room for more metal.
On Monday, customers selling scrap will come in a new entrance facing Black Street. In addition, there’s now an indoor waiting area with three pay windows instead of one, a drive-through for recycling copper, brass, aluminum and other metals, and an area outside to unload iron and steel items, said Neil Cohen, president of Hamilton Scrap. This will allow them to serve more customers, handle and process more material, and opens the door to venture into new product lines, Cohen said.
“We’re committed to Hamilton,” he said. “We have a very significant footprint in this community.”
The new entrance is part of a renovated building that Hamilton Scrap purchased last year from SMART Papers, he said. It is on property adjacent to the previous entrance. The nine acres became available next door at a reduced price because of the real estate market and Hamilton Scrap snatched it up for when the time came to expand.
The old entrance facing Hensel Place and the space there will be used for indoor processing, he said.
Hamilton Scrap has been in growth mode the past year. In June of last year, it purchased Daniel Cohen Enterprises on Maple Avenue. That Cohen is no relation. That move increased its business and its work force from 25 to approximately 40 full-time equivalent employees, he said.
In July 2010, it purchased the property on Black Street, doubling the size of its property.
And he said, though it was an independent company with common ownership before, on Feb. 1 it officially became one of 27 divisions in four states of Cohen Brothers Inc., of Middletown.
Because of the extra space for processing, storage and handling, the expansion makes way for Hamilton Scrap to stretch its arms. One part of its business is to pick up scrap from commercial customers and it hopes to do more of that.
Also, they’ll have the capacity to potentially branch into other material handling, including e-scrap, plastic and paper. E-scrap is recycling electronics such as computers, which Cohen Brothers started doing last year in Middletown.
The Hamilton business handles 350 to 500 cash transactions a day and picks up scrap from several hundred customers. It takes in 5,000 to 6,000 tons a month in ferrous scrap or iron and steel, and 500 to 600 tons a month of nonferrous metal, including copper, brass and aluminum.
Cohen Brothers is a key piece of the steel industry in Butler County, as one of the largest suppliers of scrap steel to AK Steel Corp. and a buyer of scrap steel from other processors, such as Matandy Steel and Metal Products, Cohen said.
Hamilton Scrap started as a paper recycling company in the 1920s and was bought by Neil and his brother Ken Cohen, of Cohen Brothers, from their great uncle in 1975. The Hamilton business moved to its site in 1983 and in 1993, the paper business was sold.
Mose and Phil Cohen, Neil and Ken’s grandfather and great uncle, started Cohen Brothers in 1924, and it’s now the eighth-largest ferrous and nonferrous scrap processor in North America, according to the company.
Neil and Ken Cohen’s father Wilbur, 88, still works in Middletown.
Now it’s a fourth-generation company.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.
Source : www.middletownjournal.com
