May/June 1999
Griff Martin’s career reads like a history of the precious metal recovery industry. And at 71, he’s still leading his company—Martin Metals Inc.—to success in this competitive niche.
By Si Wakesberg
Si Wakesberg is New York bureau Chief for Scrap.
Howard Griffiths Martin Jr. wanted to be a lawyer, not a scrap recycler. “I like to make a point,” he explains, “and law is a great career in which to make a point.”
But the allure of metals—in particular, precious metals—got into his blood and captured his imagination, prompting him to abandon his law plans for a career as a scrap entrepreneur.
And what a career it’s been. Griff—as he prefers to be called—has seen the birth, development, and maturation of the precious metal-bearing scrap recycling industry. His company, Martin Metals Inc. (Los Angeles), has processed 1.2 million troy ounces of gold, 7 million troy ounces of silver, and millions more ounces of other precious metals in its 43 years. And in that time, Griff has personally helped advance the industry through his participation in ISRI, its predecessor organizations, and other precious metal-related groups.
This is one case in which the legal profession’s loss proved to be a great gain for the scrap industry.
Pigs and Precious Metals
Griff can trace his scrap heritage to his grandfather, Stephen Martin, who owned a farm in Burbank, Calif., on which he grew alfalfa and raised hogs. In 1922, Grandpa Martin began collecting garbage throughout Burbank to use as hog feed. Along with the garbage, he also gathered paper, metals, bottles, tires, bones, and other scrap, which he sorted and sold.
Griff’s father carried on this scrap business, then named Martin Metals Inc. “I was brought up in the industry, and my father thought I’d be a good successor,” says Griff, who was born in 1927. “So he started taking me to the plant to learn how to segregate and clean metals.” Griff’s first job, in fact, was cleaning and sorting brasses, coppers, and aluminums.
By the time he was 10, Griff had a good feel for sorting metals, but he decided that the scrap business wasn’t for him. “I wanted to be in a professional job,” he says. Specifically, he wanted to be an attorney.
But World War II intervened and threw off his career plans. After finishing high school in 1945, Griff joined the Merchant Marine and set out to see the world. Following his discharge in 1949, he rejoined his father’s scrap firm. A big item on the market at that time was irony, or “crash,” aluminum from wrecked aircraft. Griff quickly saw the benefit in melting that material into remelt ingot. “The difference between selling the aluminum as it was and selling it as remelt ingot was so great that I saw it would pay us to build a furnace,” Griff recalls.
So he built a sweat furnace, and Martin Metals became a secondary aluminum smelter, eventually specializing in the production of specification ingot for the die-casting industry. That’s when Griff began to do business with scrap industry legend Mack Cottler, who became his biggest and best customer as well as his mentor.
Handling aluminum aircraft engines gave Griff his first introduction to precious metal-bearing scrap. The engines contained silver-lined bearings, platinum spark plugs, and magneto points. The firm also recycled missile skirts that contained nickel tubing and silver solder. “In the process of dismantling those engines, we’d pull out the precious metal-bearing material and stockpile it, not knowing what to do with it,” Griff says.
The firm eventually found a consumer for this material, but it wasn’t happy with the assay results that came back. “So we started putting in some small processing equipment, which led to getting deeper into the business of processing precious metals,” Griff recounts. “One thing led to another. As you get into this type of operation, you say, ‘Let’s take it one more step, and one more step, and one more step.’”
Even so, Martin Metals—then run by Griff, his father, and Griff’s brother-in-law—focused on aluminum smelting throughout the early 1950s. In 1954, Griff was drafted for a two-year stint in the Army. When he returned, the state of California forced Martin Metals to move to make way for a freeway.
At that point, Griff established his own business, founding a new Martin Metals in Los Angeles that specialized in recycling precious metal-bearing scrap.
Griff’s mentor Mack Cottler was instrumental in helping him launch his fledgling company.
“I owe Mack a debt of gratitude for his help early on,” he says. There were others, too. Griff names Sam Shapiro, Lou and Manny Walters, and Reggie Newman among those who aided him as he made his way into the precious metal scene.
In those early days, Martin Metals processed a lot of government material, such as those aircraft engines with silver-lined bearings. The firm recovered these precious metals through sweating operations, cyanide stripping, and other procedures. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the company expanded into gold-plated computer boards, which were a veritable goldmine in those days.
“Gold—an excellent contact metal—was $35 an ounce up until the mid-1970s, so there was no hesitation in using it in the production of computer boards,” explains Griff.
Everything changed when gold prices rose dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “As gold became more and more expensive, manufacturers were less inclined to use it,” Griff says. “It got to the point where it didn’t pay to recover the minimal gold content.” To illustrate his point, he notes that in the 1960s, his firm could recover 200 to 300 troy ounces of gold per ton of computer boards, whereas today a ton yields only 3 to 5 troy ounces, he says.
What that meant for firms like Martin Metals is this: “We had to become more efficient in our processing procedures than we were in those earlier days,” Griff notes. His firm, for instance, began to chop boards, burn boards, and eliminate some production steps by feeding boards directly into melts—all in the name of becoming more competitive. “You have to carve it down to the bone and live like that,” he says.
Power Through Association
In addition to being a trailblazer in his specialized field, Griff has been a leader in the scrap industry’s trade associations for more than 45 years, beginning with the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel (ISIS) and expanding to include the National Association of Secondary Material Industries (NASMI), ISRI, the International Precious Metals Institute (for which he serves as a board member), and other groups.
Ironically, it was aluminum, not precious metals, that prompted Griff to get involved with scrap industry trade associations. It was the early 1950s, and Martin Metals needed remelt aluminum for its smelting operation. But due to the Korean War, remelt aluminum in the government stockpile was sold by allocation. To get an allocation, Griff flew to Washington, D.C., and met with Ed Barringer, executive vice president of ISIS. “He introduced me to the right people for us to get an allocation,” he says. “After that, I figured we should become an ISIS member in appreciation for what he’d done for us.”
Of his subsequent ISIS experiences, Griff recalls vividly his attendance at a seminar at Michigan State University and his meeting with many of his peers. Not long after that, Bill Story, who succeeded Barringer as executive vice president of ISIS, asked him to work on the precious metal section of a metals identification manual he was developing for the Department of Defense. That work, Griff says, was one of the most satisfying experiences of his business life.
For NASMI (later know as the National Association of Recycling Industries, or NARI), Griff helped found its precious metals committee and served as its first chairman. He also helped draft and add specifications on precious metal-bearing scrap to the association’s scrap specifications circular. In addition, he attended NARI’s metals seminars at the University of Wisconsin, met many fellow students with whom he established long-term relationships, and had the satisfaction of becoming a lecturer and teacher at future seminars.
A Career of Changes
Over his lifetime in the scrap recycling industry, Griff has seen many changes in both his specialized precious metal recovery niche and the business world in general.
“The biggest innovation is that we’re able to communicate and make deals today in ways we weren’t able to do in the past,” he states. Improved international telephone networks, fax machines, e-mail, the Internet—all have transformed business. “You feel freer to do business today,” he says.
Computers have been another huge boon for business. “We can keep inventories, we can keep track of our units and know exactly what we have at any moment,” Griff explains. Computers also enable Griff to see what’s happening in commodity markets around the world at all times.
Further, today’s commodity markets give firms such as Martin Metals the chance to hedge its units in some market throughout the world, 24 hours a day. “If you can’t sell something on a back-to-back position, for example, you can go and sell it on some kind of commodity market somewhere in the world—and that’s an advantage,” Griff says, noting that he bought a seat on the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1978 to take advantage of the market’s expanded hedging and trading opportunities.
While the basic processing technology of the precious metal recycling industry hasn’t changed much, it has been continually improved. “The most advanced changes in refining of precious metals today are in the platinum-group metals where the refining is done in ion exchange units,” Griff notes.
Along with these positive market changes have come a few not-so-positive shifts. One has been the growing influence of fund managers—or “technicians,” as Griff calls them—on the commodity markets. “We’re dealing with two market factors now—the law of supply and demand, which is fundamental, and fund managers who have so much money, they don’t care what they do with it,” Griff asserts. “They can make money in the stock market and take a position in the precious metal market, force the market up or down, lose a lot of money, and they really don’t care.” These fund managers have brought more volatility to the markets, he says, adding that “we’re going to see more dynamic gyrations in the market because of who the players are—the technicians are controlling the market.”
Precious metal processors such as Martin Metals have also seen their industry come under stricter and stricter environmental regulations. “In 1960, I operated under one permit and had a license from the city of Los Angeles,” Griff says. “Today, I have around 30 different permits—from a U.S. EPA number all the way down to a license from the Los Angeles County fire department for having hazardous materials in my plant.”
Complying with all of these environmental rules has required Martin Metals to have “very, very strict quality control,” he says. “We must have advanced control technology to ensure that we meet or exceed regulatory expectations.” Demanding? Yes. But Griff is philosophical about these rigors: “If you’re going to stay in business, you have to conform to the existing rules and regulations. You may not agree with them, but they’re here and they’re not going away.”
Further, precious metal recyclers face stiff competition from overseas precious metal recovery operations that have much lower labor and operating costs, as well as minimal environmental restrictions, Griff says. What will these changes mean for small “boutique” processors and refiners like Martin Metals? Ironically, Griff addressed that very question in his MBA thesis when he returned to school to earn that advanced degree in the early 1970s. The answer: “We have to do everything we can to service our customers,” he states. “The customer is our bread and butter, that’s the bottom line.”
In the precious metal recovery business, service largely means being totally reliable and accountable on assay results. It also means offering customers more unique services and giving them peace of mind regarding downstream environmental liability. “All we have to sell is service,” Griff says. “And every day I look out of my office and see a sign that asks, ‘Of what service can I be for my customers today?’ That’s it.”
As for the prospects for precious metal growth in general, Griff is most optimistic about the future of platinum. “The fuel cell is the biggest consumer of platinum, and it remains one of the chief energy sources for the future,” he says.
He also sees great potential in—and a growing need for—computer recycling. “That’s a project to which I’ll devote as much time and energy as I can afford because I believe it’s increasingly important and of tremendous value to our industry,” he states.
No Retirement, Thank You
In his career, Griff has seen some tough times, times that could have prompted him to consider abandoning the precious metal recovery business for easier endeavors. “Yes, there have been some real tough times,” he says. “I’ve had people say, ‘Why don’t you get out and do something else?’” Then, reflectively, he states, “I’m not that kind of person. I love challenges. I think challenges are what make your life work. And if you don’t accept challenges, there’s nothing left for you.”
That’s not the only reason Griff decided to swap his desire to be an attorney for a career in the scrap recycling business. It comes down to a sense of pride. “There are an awful lot of lawyers in the world, but not many processors of precious metal-bearing scrap,” he says. “We’re kind of a unique species. I’m proud to be who I am.”
Still, at 71—and with a lifetime of work in the scrap industry to his credit—Griff would be perfectly justified in simply retiring and enjoying his well-deserved rewards. He could immerse himself in his hobbies and pets, which include kio (a type of Japanese fish) and three macaws, one of which is an endangered species, he says. He’s also a partner in Kids 007, an Internet safety store and community for children and adults alike.
But retirement isn’t for Griff. “I like to be active,” he says. “I think that once you stop learning and doing, it’s like a tree that stops growing—you’re going to wither and die. Every day, I learn something new, and that’s very important. In fact, I think that’s the ultimate goal—to learn as much as you can and participate.” •
Griff Martin’s career reads like a history of the precious metal recovery industry. And at 71, he’s still leading his company—Martin Metals Inc.—to success in this competitive niche.