Americans’ love for new gadgets has created a gold mine for
recyclers who make money saving the planet one old computer at a
time, and now an Asian enterprise wants a piece of the pie.
Gilroy – Americans’ love for new gadgets has created a gold mine for recyclers who make money saving the planet one old computer at a time, and now an Asian enterprise wants a piece of the pie.
A Singapore company just bought a Gilroy-based electronics recycler for $22 million, but managers say local and domestic jobs will remain and prosper as more people throw away more cell phones and as industrial companies around the world grow greener with the help of nearby – not outsourced – recyclers.
Metech International employs 17 people here and 23 at its other domestic recycling plant in Worcester, Mass. Both facilities, which average 47,000 square feet, handle industrial manufacturing scrap and end-of-life electronics and recycled 19 million pounds of junk last year.
Now Metech, which moved here from South San Francisco in the mid 1980s, will be part of a burgeoning international network of electronic waste recycling since publicly traded Centillion Environment and Recycling acquired it at the end of August. This isn’t bad news for U.S. workers, though, according to Metech managers.
“We plan to move forward domestically as we have in the past couple of years … business is up as long as the greening of America grows,” said Stan Yanaga, Metech’s vice president of sales here. “The plan is not to export materials or import scrap, because that defies the purpose. The idea is to get a worldwide footprint so scrap can remain localized.”
The more computers, Blackberries and cell phones that people chew up and spit out, the more business for Metech and the more attention the issue receives as policy makers far and wide grapple with the political woes of environmental issues such as global warming.
As per the details of the purchase, Metech shareholders will receive $10 million in Centillion shares, and the company will pay the remaining $12 million in cash.
At the Worcester facility, Metech mostly handles disassembly while the south Gilroy site, located at 6200 Engle Way just off the Monterey Street exit on U.S. 101 in south Gilroy, concentrates on recovering metals like gold, silver and platinum from things like circuit boards.
