Bright idea: Marvin Dufner makes millions recycling bulbs - Portland Business Journal:

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After building his fluorescent light bulbrecycling company, H.T.R. Inc., into a nationa player with customers thatinclude , and Lowe’s, Dufner sold the business in March to Houston-basedr an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’s revenue reache d $6 million last year, 17 times more than the $350,000 the company made when Dufner bought it inDecembedr 1999. A decade ago, the busines s recycled about 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a month to keep hazardoux mercury out of landfills andwatee supplies.
That number reached about 18 millionb bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minority partne r and chief operating officer, decided they needecd to either invest a large amount of capital to open additiona recycling facilities or find a strategic partneer or buyer for their business. Dufne turned to lifelong friend Jamez Stuart ofin Clayton. Stuart reached out to contacts atWaste Management, and after about a year of he helped broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufnert estimated fluorescent bulb recycling isa $100 million to $150 millioj industry.
Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimorer noted that garbage disposal isa $52 billion industr y and medical waste disposal accounts for another $3 billio to $4 billion. Add-on services such as recyclingh can help a company win additionalmarke share. “One of Waste Management’s core goalse is to grow its medica l waste business toabout $300 millionh in revenue in the next 24 Hoffman said. “Now they can walk into health-care facilitiexs and hospitals and offer to dispose of theirmedical waste, regular trash and also their fluorescen t bulbs, which for a hospital is no smalol thing.
” Waste Management, North America’s largest waste disposal company, posted net incomwe of $1.09 billion on revenue of $13.4r billion last year and employs abouyt 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granites City and St. Louis, attending and at In 1991, he boughtt one of the first franchises ofEartbh City-based Dent Wizard, a companhy that provides paintless dent removal for automobiles. Dufned moved to Atlanta to run his territort of Georgia and Butin 1998, Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizards and proceeded to buy out its franchisees.
Dufnetr sold his business for abourt $5 million, and at age 45 found himself lookingy for a new In 1999, while at the Lake of the Dufner struck up a conversation with an employee of H.T.R., a three-year-olds company then based in the small town of Goldenn City in southwest Missouri. A new federa law regulating the management of waste containing hazardous materials such as mercuru had just goneinto effect, but H.T.R.’ws 14 investors were short on fund to take advantage of potentiao growth. Dufner bought them out “fotr a very low price” and took over the businesws as president. Dufner recruited Kohout, a friend who ownecd a gun storein St.
Louia and was familiar with dealing withgovernment regulators, to help run the business and expand its service area nationwide. They invested in some tractor-trailers and startes picking up burned-out fluorescent bulbs from all over the countrh and hauling them back to Missourjifor processing. Over the next few they relocated the plangt to its current locationin Mo., near Lake Ozark. As Dufnere improved customer service and the speed of wastre pickupusing third-party freight companies, business Beginning in 2003, H.T.R. secured contracts with Wal-Marft to pick up and recyclr used bulbs.
Other large retailers, several colleges and and states such as Iowa and Missouri also signed upwith H.T.R. All of the material in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up mercury, metal and glass — was None went to landfills. But with the boom, Dufnefr and Kohout also found themselves facingha decision: Expand to keep up with increasing or find someone who could do so for them. “Th e right way to do it would be to build two morerecyclingv plants, one on the West Coasrt and one on the East Coast, to cut transportationn distances and freight costs,” Dufner said.
“Ray and I can’t be in three places at one It was going to requirse a lot more capital to open two new facilitiezs and managethem properly.” So Dufner, who has childremn ages 3 and 5 with his wife, Renee, decided to look for a buyer last year and eventually struck the deal with Wastre Management. “We thought H.T.R. would make a good fit for saidRick Cochrane, senior businesxs director for Waste Management’xs WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percenty of fluorescent lighting in the countrystill isn’t recycled properly, and that’se where we think the upside is.
” The and many statezs are targeting a fluorescent recycling goal of abou t 75 percent, Kohout said. Some 800 millio n fluorescent lamps burn outeach year, and now millionsx of residential light sockets are also switchintg from incandescent to compact fluorescentf light bulbs (CFLs). Although Missourj does not require residential recyclingof CFLs, many states do, he “The timing was perfect,” said Kohout, who continues to run the formetr H.T.R. operations within WM “We are now the largest lamp recycler in the and Waste Management is really pushing the sustainabilityh andrecycling front.
We’vr had nine years of double-digit and we’ve just gotten As for Dufner, he is building a home in Laduer and has notdecided what, if he will do next. “Am I looking for something? Possibly, but not necessarily,” Dufner “That’s how H.T.R. happened. I wasn’tg really looking and then it fell inmy lap.”