May/June 1998
England’s J. McIntyre Machinery Ltd. has a competitive edge that most manufacturers can only dream about: its own scrap processing facilities for testing its equipment.
By Robert L. Reid
Robert L. Reid is managing editor of Scrap.
Losing a wheel in the dirt road beneath the shadow of England’s famed Nottingham Castle may sound more like the opening scene in a fairy tale than the start of a scrap processing machinery business. But the small hydraulic shears, balers, can crushers, grapples, and other equipment manufactured by J. McIntyre Machinery Ltd. (Nottingham, England) owe their origins to the wheel that fell off the wagon of itinerant scrap merchant John McIntyre in 1872.
Today, 126 years later, McIntyre Machinery is a $7.5 million-a-year enterprise with a constantly evolving product line. The company is also branching out from its scrap processing equipment base with a new product designed to help any business that recovers metal from aluminum dross.
As part of the $70 million-a-year Nottingham Metal Recyclers Group (NMR), McIntyre Machinery is run by a family-owned holding company that also includes the nonferrous scrap processing plants of J. McIntyre (Non-Ferrous) Ltd. and J. McIntyre (Aluminium) Ltd.—the largest secondary aluminum smelter in the British Isles, says NMR Chairman Michael Pownall. NMR’s 6-acre headquarters facility in Nottingham’s Dunkirk area incorporates a mix of all these operations—nonferrous scrap processing, aluminum smelting, and equipment manufacturing.
And therein lies one of the firm’s strengths. Its experience in scrap recycling gives it an ideal perspective on the industry’s equipment needs, while its on-site processing and melting operations give it the ability to test its machinery in real-world conditions. This is one case where a company enjoys the best of both worlds.
‘Honest John’ Comes to Nottingham
But before this story gets too solidly planted in the present, we don’t want to leave poor John McIntyre stranded along the Nottingham roadside.
Instead of fixing his wagon wheel and moving on, the Irish immigrant decided to stop right where his wheel broke and set up shop. His business: selling scrap iron—primarily from horseshoes and boilers—as well as rabbit skins, cloth, and woolen rags. Towering over his scrap yard was the rock cliff topped by Nottingham Castle, renowned for the adventures of Robin Hood and his nemesis, the Sheriff of ... you know.
“Honest John” McIntyre’s scrap business didn’t use machinery back then—everything was brought into the yard on hand carts, sorted manually, and then broken down by hand tools. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that the McIntyre scrap business adopted a more modern shine, selling mostly ferrous and nonferrous metals, notes Michael Pownall. The coming of World War I guaranteed metal’s dominant role by bringing armament factories to Nottingham, which is situated in the north central region of England.
John McIntyre died at the end of World War I, at which time management of the McIntyre company was offered to a member of another local scrap business, Edward “Ted” Pownall—Michael’s father. Ted drove scrap trucks during the day and played violin in a dance hall band at night, Michael relates. But his father wanted to run his own business, and this was his chance. He bought the J. McIntyre name for £10—because he thought the “Honest John” part was a good name to be associated with—and then paid for the deal that first day, earning exactly £10 profit.
Surviving the Great Depression of the 1930s and then World War II—during which any kind of metal, from iron railings on people’s homes to cannons in historic castles, was melted down for scrap—the company grew and moved to ever-larger sites around the Nottingham area. The next generation of Pownalls also came into the business with Michael, who earned an engineering degree, starting to work with scrap in 1960.
By 1968, J. McIntyre was one of 15 metal merchants in the Nottingham area, where the scrap business was still very labor-intensive, with an almost antimachinery attitude. “For a long time we’d been prejudiced against big shears,” Michael explains. “Our thought was to get three more men and three little shears—we didn’t see the need for a big machine.”
But in that dramatic year of 1968—when men were circling the moon while young people protested around the world—the J. McIntyre scrap business launched its own revolution against the status quo by purchasing a shear large enough to cut up automobiles. Even then it was a tough sell—the manufacturer had to throw in a free nonferrous baler to seal the deal. But soon that new piece of machinery “made us Mr. Big in Nottingham,” Michael recalls.
A few years later, the auto shredding business helped J. McIntyre grow so large that it needed to move again, finally reaching its present location in 1975—originally a 12-acre facility encompassing both ferrous and nonferrous scrap plants. The company continued to grow over the next decade, becoming NMR in 1988. A year later, the company split into two separate entities, with Michael retaining the nonferrous business and his brother John taking the ferrous side. John Pownall eventually sold his portion to Simsmetal Ltd. (Sydney, Australia), whose Nottingham scrap operation, Sims McIntyre Metals Ltd., still sits in the center of the NMR site.
Making Machinery for the Real World
At about the same time that J. McIntyre found its current home in the mid-1970s, the company also launched its equipment manufacturing business. Some successful enterprises start out in the owner’s basement or garage—McIntyre Machinery evolved from a wooden cabinet. The cabinet came from a bankrupt machinery manufacturer whose equipment Michael Pownall had seen at an exposition. Inside the cabinet were the engineering drawings for the defunct line of machinery, most of which did not interest Michael. But he did like one particular small shear, so he bought up all the spare parts that he could find and began manufacturing the unit in a rented shed.
The idea then was not to sell the small shear but to use it on-site at the J. McIntyre scrap facilities. Most McIntyre Machinery products begin that way—meeting some internal need of the company’s scrap processing operations, being refined and improved, and only then offered for sale to other businesses. “It’s one of the reasons McIntyre Machinery has sold so many machines and been so profitable,” notes Gary Gaither, president of McIntyre Machinery America Ltd. (Stow, Ohio), the American-owned distributor for McIntyre equipment in North and South America. “All the designs come from the real world—real people using it day in and day out.” It’s easy enough for other equipment manufacturers to design a machine that looks good on paper, Gary adds, “but in the real world the controls might be on the wrong side of the operator.”
Of course, McIntyre Machinery can make that same mistake—plenty of equipment has been designed and built for internal use but never offered for sale outside the company, Michael notes. But here’s the difference, according to Gary: Before a machine is sold, it will first be conceived based on a real-world scrap processing problem, designed using input from operators, tried out under actual working conditions, and when necessary reworked to get the bugs out. “If the operators don’t like something, they can change it,” Gary notes. And while such in-house trials add as much as six months to the release date for a new piece of equipment, they also give McIntyre Machinery a unique edge, Gary says.
That edge was apparent from the day McIntyre Machinery’s first small shear—the Model 200—hit the market. “We sold 64 shears on the spot in two days,” Michael recalls proudly.
A Hydraulic-Powered Geometry Lesson
All McIntyre Machinery products, from shears to balers to the new TARDIS dross processing unit, are hydraulically powered, often using the same rams, pistons, cylinders, and other time-tested parts. “The basic engineering is proven technology—5,000 times over,” Michael says, referring to the roughly 5,000 pieces of McIntyre equipment in use worldwide.
The bulk of McIntyre’s sales are in the United Kingdom and the United States, although recently the company has also been making inroads into Eastern Europe. Small shears and balers are the leading products, along with can and drum crushers. And the company has high hopes for TARDIS, introduced two years ago, although the product’s price tag is quite a change from McIntyre’s usual customer base: roughly $200,000 for a TARDIS compared with an average cost of $10,000 for a small shear.
McIntyre Machinery also manufactures grapples but does not sell many, Michael concedes, because the company has never established a relationship with a crane maker. That’s critical as most cranes are purchased with an accompanying grapple.
Among its attributes, McIntyre equipment is durable, Michael says. Many 18-year-old McIntyre shears are still working just fine, he notes, joking: “Our biggest competition at the moment is ourselves—it’s our own existing product” that’s worked so well it doesn’t need replacing.
Michael credits “geometry”—meaning the angle and profile of the cutting blades—for the quality and durability of McIntyre shears. “If you compare our shear to any other shear with a bigger tonnage and bigger motor, our shear will outcut the other shear because of the geometry,” he says, adding that McIntyre Machinery has successfully defended its patented designs in court against competitors who have tried to copy them.
The company’s assembly system also helps create superior products, Michael says. Assembly begins with component parts, such as hydraulic pumps and electric motors, manufactured for McIntyre Machinery by specialized companies that were drawn to the Nottingham area because of the business McIntyre provides, Michael says. For instance, potential customers who want a little high-speed excitement with their scrap processing might like to know that McIntyre products use the same pumps as Lamborghini sports cars.
These purchased parts are then combined with components that McIntyre manufactures itself—such as cylinders—and assembled by small units of a foreman and about a half-dozen employees who specialize in one aspect of the product. Thirty-five of NMR’s 170 employees work exclusively on the machinery lines. “We’ve had the opportunity to centralize production in one unit,” Michael notes, “but we’ve been very shy about it. We like this system—their performance is very measurable.”
McIntyre in America
When equipment being assembled in England is scheduled for delivery to the United States, work stops when the machine is about 80 percent complete. Quality checks confirm that everything assembled so far is working fine. Then the unit is shipped to McIntyre Machinery America Ltd. in Ohio for final assembly according to customer needs, notes Gary Gaither.
Previously, Gary and his wife Mary had worked for a general machinery broker in Ohio that had been selling McIntyre equipment but was no longer interested in the small shear market. At that point, the couple parted ways with the company and decided to represent McIntyre Machinery on their own.
Back in England, Michael also liked the idea of “total distributorship” focused on selling and servicing his products. He’d used a number of agents in America over the years, but they kept changing on him.
On Jan. 1, 1994, the Gaithers opened their dedicated distributorship in a 7,500-square-foot warehouse. Although they refer to NMR as their “parent company,” the Gaithers started McIntyre Machinery America as a separate business, not a division or subsidiary of the English firm. Still, they maintain a close relationship with the Pownalls and consult with them on major decisions involving the company.
During their first year, the Gaithers doubled McIntyre Machinery’s North American sales and have been growing steadily ever since. Last year’s sales of $2 million represented just under one-third of McIntyre Machinery’s total sales worldwide, Gary notes. Today, McIntyre Machinery America employs six full-time employees, including Mary as CFO, Gary’s brother Greg as general manager, and Derek Hagmaier as salesman, plus three part-time employees on an as-needed basis.
McIntyre Machinery America achieved its rapid growth, in part, by diversifying sales to markets outside the scrap industry. The Gaithers sell equipment to textile companies, manufacturers, demolition contractors, and the U.S. government, which uses McIntyre shears at Fort Knox to cut gold bars, Gary says. He has even suited up in protective gear and installed equipment in a “hot” nuclear power plant—albeit with a strict “no-return” policy for anything that’s exposed to radiation, Mary jokes. But scrap processors remain the firm’s largest single customer base, accounting for 75 percent of sales, Gary adds.
At any given time, McIntyre Machinery America has about 20 to 30 complete machines, mostly shears, in its warehouse, according to Gary. There are also enough spare parts on hand to build another three or four units. “If I don’t have a part in my facility—which is very rare—I can have it from England in two days,” he says.
Every machine sold from McIntyre Machinery America is run in the shop for at least four hours to make sure it works properly. The machines are also tested on actual material at the roughest setting the unit is supposed to take. Customers who require more specific proof can “send us samples of their own material,” Mary says. “We can make a videotape of us actually doing their material and then send them the tape.”
The Power of Testimonials
Although McIntyre Machinery America uses about a half dozen subagents in North America and one in Brazil to sell its equipment, referrals play an equally important role, Gary says, stressing, “our customers are our best sales agents.”
In fact, if someone calls the firm to ask about a product, a quick search through its database usually finds an existing customer close by for the potential customer to visit. For instance, Friedland Industries Inc., a ferrous, nonferrous, and scrap paper processor in Lansing, Mich., has had several interested parties stop by to see its McIntyre equipment in action, says Jerry Forsythe, plant manager.
Friedland, which has three McIntyre shears, gives visitors a roughly 15-minute presentation about the equipment, Forsythe says. It’s not just a testimonial, though. Sometimes, Forsythe lets visitors cut some material to see for themselves how well the shears work.
Friedland is not compensated for these efforts, Forsythe says, although the company has enjoyed an unexpected benefit from owning the modern hydraulic equipment: Before purchasing its first McIntyre shear, Friedland operated an old, old shear with squealing belts and a big spinning wheel on the outside—a machine so intimidating that some potential employees took one look and decided to work elsewhere.
Max Sugarman & Co., a ferrous and nonferrous processor in Quincy, Mass., has also talked with potential customers for McIntyre equipment over the phone, rather than in person. “The machine sells itself” through its reliability and efficiency, says Steve Sugarman, operations manager. He also likes the safety features on the one McIntyre shear the company owns. “The angle of the guard doesn’t obstruct vision of your hand,” which reduces the chance of injuries, Sugarman says.
Staying on the Cutting Edge
In England and America, McIntyre Machinery is always looking to improve its existing products and expand into new areas. Last year, for instance, the company introduced its first wire stripper and more recently added a new baling press. And TARDIS opens up opportunities to create other products for foundries.
Within NMR, a new generation of leaders is moving up. Michael, NMR chairman since 1986, no longer runs daily operations, leaving those tasks to his sons David and Phillip and daughter Sally Johnson. Sally is McIntyre Machinery’s managing director while David serves as McIntyre’s sales director and NMR’s commercial director. Phillip is an NMR director and the company’s senior aluminum trader.
But despite new products and new managers, there’s no need for scrap processors to worry about changes in the service they’ve come to expect from McIntyre Machinery, says Mary Gaither.
Speaking for both sides of the Atlantic, Mary stresses that new ventures such as TARDIS won’t take away from the company’s focus on shears. After all, “shears are our bread and butter,” she explains. “We’ll never lose the service or attention we give to our shear customers. That will never happen.” •
England's J. McIntyre Machinery Ltd. has a competitive edge that most manufacturers can only dream about: its own scrap processing facilities for testing its equipment.