A Man of the World
Jun 9, 2014, 08:39 AM
July/August 1999
Barry Hunter has some back-to-business plans for the BIR during his term as president of the international scrap association.
By Kent Kiser
Kent Kiser is associate publisher and editor of Scrap.
Barry Hunter is taking a short break from his booked-solid schedule at the Rome convention of the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) (Brussels).
It’s hardly a restful break, however. While grabbing a quick lunch, he fields questions during yet another interview with a scrap industry journalist. His schedule, though hectic, is what you’d expect for the man who will become the BIR’s new president within a matter of hours.
In short, being elected BIR president will be the culmination of Hunter’s more than 20 years of involvement in the international scrap association, perhaps even the pinnacle of his 38-year career in the scrap industry.
His election is at once ironic and perfectly natural—ironic because Hunter didn’t even intend to pursue a career in the scrap business and natural because he ended up becoming an expert in international scrap trade, giving him the perfect background to be the BIR leader’s.
His election is also nothing less than a natural and well-earned recognition of his decades of involvement and service to industry trade groups, including the BIR.
From Passaic to the World
You could say Barry Hunter was destined for a career in the scrap industry. After all, his grandfather, Isadore Overman, was the quintessential scrap entrepreneur of yore. Overman, a Russian immigrant, started out peddling scrap in a horse and wagon. After years of hard work, he was able to open a small over-the-scale yard that handled the spectrum of scrap metals. The business, named I. Overman & Co. Scrap Iron & Metal (Passaic, N.J.), was a family affair that included Hunter’s uncle Jack Goodman and father Samuel.
Because Samuel Hunter didn’t like the scrap business, he didn’t encourage his son Barry to work at the yard. Instead, the younger Hunter followed his considerable art talent and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in fine arts. He took a job drawing shoes for a catalog company, but “it drove me nuts,” Hunterrecalls. So, at 22, he traded in his pencils and palette to join the family scrap business. In his dozen or so years working with his father and uncle (his grandfather had since retired), he did “a lot of everything” and, in the process, learned the scrap business from the ground up.
In the early 1970s, a New Jersey highway project threatened to claim some of I. Overman’s property, prompting the family to sell the business. Tired of the rigors of running a scrap yard, Hunter wanted a different type of job, one that was international in scope and in which he could trade metal. He decided to seek a position at Associated Metals & Minerals, a trading house in New York City. He asked Gerard Bonomo, vice president of Schiavone Bonomo Corp. (Jersey City, N.J.), to provide a reference for him. Bonomo refused. When Hunter asked why, Bonomo answered, “Because you’re coming to work for us.”
So, in 1972, Hunter joined Schiavone Bonomo’s metals division, later becoming a vice president in charge of its stainless and alloys division. Thus began his professional journey toward becoming a specialist in the stainless and alloys field. Also, since Schiavone Bonomo was a major scrap exporter, he began developing his expertise in international scrap trade, knowledge that would shape the rest of his career.
In 1987, Hunter was offered the opportunity to bring his international trading experience and his knowledge of stainless steel and special alloys to Baltimore-based Samuel G. Keywell Co.—now Keywell L.L.C. Keywell was a “unique company in the scrap business,” he notes, in that its structure enabled him to participate in the company as part of upper management. Hunter opened the firm’s Elizabeth, N.J., office and helped the predominantly domestic firm build an international presence. Now, 12 years later, Hunter is still going strong in the company as a senior vice president, leading the five-person New Jersey office.
The Power of Association
As Hunter was building his career in the scrap business, he was simultaneously building a reputation for himself in the industry’s trade associations. From the day he walked into his grandfather’s scrap yard, he states, “my whole career was a partnership in association work.”
His association work began humbly enough in the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel (ISIS), serving as chairman of its New Jersey Chapter’s play day. Slowly but surely, he began climbing the chapter’s leadership ladder, eventually becoming president.
That was just the first in his long line of association leadership roles. In ISIS alone, for instance, Hunter went on to serve as chairman of the public relations committee, chairman of the stainless steel and alloys committee, president of the metal scrap research and education foundation, and chairman of the special projects committee, which created the classic “Our Heritage” and “Our Heritage—The Next Generation” oral history videos in 1980 and 1986, respectively. The special projects committee was also the force behind “one of the highlights of ISIS,” Hunter says—the creation of the “ISIS” sculpture by internationally known artist Mark di Suvero to celebrate the institute’s 50th anniversary. All of this hard work on behalf of ISIS and the industry earned Hunter the 1986 E.J. “Zeke” Afram Award.
After ISIS merged with the National Association of Recycling Industries—NARI—to form ISRI, Hunter continued his service as chairman of ISRI’s public relations committee.
Early in his career, Hunter knew about the BIR, which appeared in many respects to be an upper-echelon club composed of leaders of international scrap federations and large scrap exporters. The group, which always met in enticing European locations, seemed exotic and out of reach to someone from a small scrap firm in Passaic, N.J.
But when Hunter began working for Schiavone Bonomo and when the BIR held its 1979 convention in Chicago, the BIR’s doors opened for him. At that convention, Leon Lazar of Otto Lazar S.A. (Paris)—president of the BIR’s ferrous division and one of Hunter’s trading partners—was socializing in the hallway of the Continental Plaza Hotel. Upon spotting Hunter, Lazar said, “I’m going to form a stainless steel and alloys committee—and you’re the chairman.” Hunter looked at Gerard Bonomo, who was standing with Lazar, and Bonomo repeated, “You’re the chairman.”
So began Hunter’s 20-year chairmanship of the BIR’s stainless steel and special alloys committee, an amazing term that concluded at this year’s Rome convention.
Of his early days of involvement in the BIR, Hunter recalls jokingly, “Very few attendees spoke ‘American’”—referring to the varied languages spoken by the delegates and the vast difference between the Queen’s English and American English (a difference Hunter’s English colleagues relentlessly pointed out).
Over the years, however, Hunter adjusted to the language shock and went on to even higher positions in the BIR. As a committee chairman, he became an active member of the group’s advisory council, which assists the executive committee in directing the association. In 1988, he was elected as a vice president. A decade later, in 1998, he received the lifelong title of BIR ambassador at large.
Throughout his association service, Hunter has intentionally shied away from pursuing national—or, in the case of BIR, international—officer positions. As he explains, “I always liked to work down in the trenches. I felt the committee structure was very important to the association’s development. My participation at that level was also an undeniable benefit to my company’s business.”
His “in-the-trenches” approach changed when he assumed the BIR presidency in Rome, taking the reins for at least the next two years and possibly the next four.
Barry’s Big Plans
So now, what are Hunter’s hopes, dreams, and aspirations for his BIR administration?
“Certainly the environmental and legislative issues are huge factors and they will continue to be huge factors,” Hunter says, referring to such ongoing challenges as the Basel Convention on international trade, removing scrap from the definition of waste, the threat of radioactive scrap, and more. “We’re now obviously a global industry, visible and vulnerable to all international and political change,” he said in his acceptance speech, asserting that the BIR’s officers and secretariat “must continue to take an aggressive lead on critical legislative, environmental, and educational issues for the well-being of our membership and indeed the whole industry.”
Another goal during his term is to continue to strengthen the relationships between the BIR and its member federations such as ISRI. “I plan to meet with the directors of as many national associations and federations as possible and find out if, number one, we’re doing enough and, number two, if they’re doing enough,” he says. With member federations, there’s a delicate balance between national and international association needs. To address this and other issues, there needs to be a more open dialog between the BIR and its member federations. “If they’ve got a complaint about the BIR, let us hear it. If we’ve got a complaint about them, we’ll let them know,” Hunter says, stating that “we have to get into these issues as soon as possible and make sure we’re all going in the right direction.”
He stresses this issue because he sees great potential for synergy among the BIR and its member federations. “I think we can create synergy in savings, working projects together, making sure that the industry is represented as best as possible on a unilateral level,” he says. “Perhaps we could even develop some sort of membership exchange program down the road. I don’t know how, but I’d like to see it happen.”
On a related note, Hunter would also like to see the BIR expand its presence in South America and Asia, working primarily through federations in those regions. There are certainly some formidable obstacles. In Asia, for instance, large trading companies dominate the market, and it’s “very difficult to get a trading house to commit to an association,” Hunter points out. That said, the challenge is “certainly worth the effort.” His job will be to help figure out how best to proceed.
The core goal of his term, however, will be to emphasize the commercial opportunities available to members through active participation in the BIR. In short, he wants the BIR to refocus on the business and trade benefits it offers members. “We must expand our programs geared to cost savings, operating efficiencies, and market evaluations, and present our conventions as a forum in which members can get together in a setting to exchange views, absorb information, and actively trade their products,” he said in his acceptance speech. “We must emphasize the word trade when it comes to describing the benefits of BIR.” Only in this way can the BIR be truly reflective of a trade organization, “which after all is what we are,” he said.
Will his plans fly? That depends to a large extent on the feedback and support they get from the BIR’s executive committee, advisory council, members, and member federations. “One of my philosophies is: If it doesn’t work, stop it. If it works, continue it. If it may work, try it,” he says, adding, “If I’m strong enough or if the programs are good enough, they’ll fly. If they’re not, they’re going to be tempered.”
As he said in his acceptance speech, “I only hope that by working together with the other officers, the members of the advisory council, our BIR staff, and especially the membership, we can achieve goals that will make this industry and BIR stronger and more significant for the future generations that will follow.”
Barry Hunter has some back-to-business plans for the BIR during his term as president of the international scrap association.