March/April 1992
Wendt Corp. is one young equipment company that knows how to think big. Armed with a detailed business plan and new products, it aims to become a major force in the international market.
BY KENT KISER
Kent Kiser is associate editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
At a business meeting several years ago, a Finnish scrap processor remarked to Thomas A. Wendt, "Don't make scrap out of scrap," referring to processors' needs for equipment that helps them upgrade the materials they handle. That idea became a mantra to equipment-maker Wendt, president of Wendt Corp. (Tonawanda, N.Y.)—formerly D&J Wendt Corp.—and he has kept it in mind as his company has expanded its line of scrap processing equipment.
In 15 years, Wendt has expanded his company from an operation that serviced balers to a 30-person, international corporation that manufactures and distributes balers, shears, grinders, cranes, and complete shredding systems. All along, Wendt's mission has stayed the same: to make innovative processing equipment that will produce cleaner, denser, more valuable grades of scrap for its customers.
A Company With a Plan
Wendt Corp. entered the 1990s with a plan ... literally, a detailed three-year business plan, with 1990 being the year of product development. The firm first expanded its engineering department to five people, including three operators of computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) equipment. Then it set to work developing new products, focusing on making them more efficient and more environmentally sensitive than existing equipment.
The firm's notable startups in 1990 were a shredder-fluff dewatering press, a portable logger/baler, shredder infeed conveyors, and the HydroSort system—a wet shredding separation system that is said to eliminate the problems of dry shredders and other wet systems. For example, the entire system is built on a curbed, pitched concrete foundation with sluices and a water storage tank, a combination designed to reduce the chance of process water runoff. The system's use of water—up to 300 gallons per minute in the shredding box—virtually eliminates the chance of explosions, adds up to 50 percent more life to certain wear parts, and prevents air pollution from dust and smoke, so no costly air permits are required, Wendt claims.
The HydroSort also includes the dewatering press, which squeezes process water out of the fluff and directs the water back to the system reservoir for reuse. Dewatering the fluff cuts landfill and trucking costs, Wendt asserts, and helps to prevent liability that could result from process water dripping from trucks and leaching out of landfills.
During 1991, the second year of its business plan, Wendt Corp. focused on "building the organization," which entailed changing its old law and accounting firms to organizations that were more "full service," with experience in the various international, environmental, commercial, and personnel issues the manufacturer expects to face in the coming years.
The company also introduced the EddySort system in 1991 as part of its ongoing product development efforts. Wendt says the automated system is designed to reclaim "virtually all the remaining marketable nonferrous metal from the shredder fluff stream," using 11 conveyors, a three-stage sizing trommel, and eddy current magnets. The key to the system's success is its ability to control the flow of fluff and ensure a "uniform particle depth," which maximizes the effectiveness of the magnets. The company's growing emphasis on shredder technology is a response to the steel industry's increasing quality demands, Wendt says, predicting, "Shredding is the way the recycling industry is going to go."
This year's part of the plan centers on the company changing its name from D&J Wendt Corp. to Wendt Corp. and transplanting its operations. In March, the firm moved from a 17,000-square-foot plant in North Tonawanda, with 4,800 square feet of office space on 2 acres, to a 60,000-square-foot plant in Tonawanda, with 5,700 square feet of office space on 7 acres. "We've been packed for three year," Wendt says, joking that making large equipment in its old facility was "like building a sailboat in the basement." The company's relocation from its old dead-end street to a plant near the two main highways in western New York is symbolic of its efforts to get on the fast track and improve its access to the world.
International Connections
Although Wendt Corp. is modest in size, it has a broad, international perspective and strong European ties. Of course, business wasn't always that way. In 1983, the young company only offered balers, a "limitation" that happened to work in its favor. At that time, Thyssen Industrie AG Henschel (Kassel, Germany) was seeking an exclusive North American sales agent for its guillotine shears, so it approached Wendt Corp. with the idea. "It was a very good marriage because we were one of the only American manufacturers that didn't have its own line of shears," Wendt explains.
Now, Wendt Corp. sells a full roster of Thyssen Henschel equipment, including balers, shears, heavy-duty shredders, shredder rotors, preshredders, and vertical grinders. These products are "top-shelf," Wendt asserts, providing high-quality processing capabilities, high production, and high density end products.
The vertical grinder, the most popular Thyseen Henschel product in North America, operates much like a peppermill, producing spherical scrap the size of golf balls or baseballs, with densities ranging from 125 to 160 pounds per cubic foot. Steelmakers appreciate this dense product, Wendt says, because it reduces the number of times they must charge scrap into their furnace, thus, reducing energy consumption.
Wendt Corp. expanded its European connections in 1985 by becoming a distributor for Industrias Hidraulicas SA/Moros (Zaragoza, Spain) and Mattschappij Bronneberg Helmond BV (MBH) (Helmond, Holland), representing their lines of balers, briquetters, guillotine shears, and alligator shears for nonferrous scrap.
Wendt is most excited, however, about his firm's recent partnership with N.V. Sobemai SA (Maldegem, Belgium), which manufactures the "revolutionary" E-Crane. The equilibrated crane features a boom in the shape of a parallellogram and a counterbalance designed to automatically adjust as the boom extends and retracts, keeping the crane in balance. "The parallellogram structure makes it unique in the world," Wendt boasts, asserting that the crane offers greater reach and more lifting capacity than lattice- and knuckle-boom cranes. As testimony to Wendt's confidence in the product, he formed E-Crane Corp. in 1991, a joint venture with Sobemai, to manufacture the crane under exclusive license in his company's new plant.
Europe has served as a home away from home for Wendt, as well as a garden of new ideas. Since 1983, he has traveled to the continent at least four times a year—sometimes as many as 10—and each time his European equipment partners show him the best installations of their products, which he says are usually in the best scrap operations in the country. Wendt goes in with "both eyes wide open" and takes "thousands and thousands" of photographs, which he organizes by visit and files at Wendt Corp. headquarters. He points out proudly that he discovered the E-Crane on one such tour.
Invariably, his tours teach him something about efficiency, since European scrap companies must operate under different—and usually more restrictive—conditions than American processors. For example, electrical energy is less available in Europe; fossil fuels are more expensive; the "green movement" is more powerful, which increases environmental restrictions; and land is scarce, forcing scrap firms to streamline their operations and process material quickly.
Building Markets
Despite his positive European partnerships, Wendt would eventually like to no longer import products, only technology. As he explains, "I want the European products, but I want to manufacture them here under license." The firm's joint venture with Sobemai and its licenses to manufacture Thyssen Henschel's vertical grinder and Moros's logger/baler are steps in this direction. "It basically boils down to controlling the product," Wendt says, noting that it's harder to service customers as a sales agent and that foreign currency swings can make their products less competitive overnight.
At the same time, Wendt Corp. is also striving to expand its export markets. Heretofore, its strongest markets have been in Canada (mainly Ontario), U.S. steel centers such as Chicago and Pittsburgh , the Northeast copper belt, and various East Coast ports. To increase overseas demand for its products, the company plans to hire a "top-notch" sales manager, Wendt says. "I still do the bulk of the sales," he notes, "and that's something I'm deliberately trying to change. The company has grown beyond my two or three hats, and I'm a severe bottleneck to the company now." Wendt's current European partnerships will help him penetrate foreign markets, he says, enabling him to use his import sales network "backward" to reach export customers.
Stressing Service
Wendt Corp.'s international focus doesn't distract it from tending to its customers at home. The company not only has a full-time service manager, who spends most of his time on the road assisting clients, but it also has a technical manager—Michael D. Woodward—who serves as liaison between the engineering and service departments. In this way, the company ensures that problems in the field are passed to the product designers, who can then make changes in future equipment. "You can see your weakest links and improve them on each and every design," says Woodward, who spends one week per month on the road, supervising installations and checking product quality. "If you just stick with your original design, the world will pass you by."
As part of its services, Wendt Corp. will review a processor's equipment and offer advice on how to increase each product's efficiency. "The productivity of a machine isn't just how fast it can operate, it's how much money it costs to operate it per ton or per pound," Woodward points out. The company will also draft a preventive maintenance program for customers and, perhaps most important, give them reliable—and reasonable—emergency service. "When a customer calls with a breakdown," Woodward notes, "they need two things: a solution and a good price."
Offering a complete line of equipment is also a service to customers, company executives point out. Between the products Wendt Corp. manufactures and those it distributes, the company attempts to cover all its customers' processing and handling needs. Where one company's products leave off, another's begin. For example, Moros makes shears with a cutting force up to 550 tons, while Thyssen Henschel's go from 660 tons to 3,300 tons, reportedly the world's largest. This complementarity is "by design," as Wendt is fond of saying. "We want our customers to be able to call us and ask what we offer to address their particular handling or processing problems," he says. "Then we can show them how to add value to what they're doing."
Current Success and New Directions
Mention the world's recent economic woes to Wendt and he seems unworried. "The past year was a record for us in terms of volume of equipment and volume of sales," he notes. The company has enjoyed an annualized growth rate of 24 percent per year for the last four years, he says, adding, "We've never stopped growing since day one, and my intent is to continue to grow." What's the company's secret? "Our products," he asserts. "We've come up with a line of unique products to the industry. Several of them are absolutely unique and exclusive, while others are simply better mousetraps."
Extensive use of computers is another "secret" of Wendt Corp.'s success. The company became "totally computerized" in the summer of 1989, establishing a local area network that electronically connected everyone in the office, from those in purchasing and inventory to the accounting and service staffs. One benefit is that the firm can now easily close its accounting books every month, rather than twice a year, and cost every job literally to the day. "We used to have a paper method," says William D. Close, production control engineer, "but you didn't know how you did until you finished the job, and it was difficult to get a handle on how your schedule was going."
Most of all, Wendt Corp. swears by its CADD equipment, which has reduced its idea-to-product time, increased the accuracy of drawings, and sped up its ability to make product changes. "Businesses nowadays that aren't information-sensitive and working with all the technology available to them are going to fall by the wayside," Wendt asserts. "You can't grow a company with old-fashioned technology and ideas."
Wendt Corp. is certainly no subscriber to old-fashioned ideas. Although the company produces equipment exclusively for processing metal scrap, and although it has its plate full promoting the E-Crane, HydroSort, and EddySort, it is "looking very seriously" at entering the scrap tire processing market. Not only are scrap tires "akin to the scrap automobile processing industry," Wendt explains, but they are a serious disposal problem, which dovetails with the firm's increasing emphasis on environmentally sensitive products.
This year, Wendt Corp. plans to market a granulating machine that can produce different grades of high-quality crumb rubber, as well as equipment that can make products out of the crumb, such as rubber surfacing for running tracks and tennis courts. The granulator can produce crumb in several different sizes and break down a tire into its components of rubber, steel belting, and fabric, Wendt says.
Preparing for 2000
Looking at Wendt Corp.'s future, Wendt sees the company continuing to move away from producing standalone pieces of equipment to creating systems, such as HydroSort and EddySort. The E-Crane is also part of this focus. By adding a material handler to its product mix, the company has "tied the whole circle together" and can now outfit agreenfield plant with an entire system to handle and process metal scrap. These efforts have helped the company meet its motto of being "The Single Source for Recycling Systems."
In the 1990s, Wendt Corp. will become more and more international to keep up with the trend toward global markets, Wendt says. "It's a world market now in the truest sense of the word," he observes, "and it didn't used to be." While Korea and China are promising growth markets, the former Soviet republics represent the biggest potential market because they are so "equipment poor," says Wendt, who visited Russia twice in recent years. "I'm confident that we'll be in all those markets," he states. And bolstered by what he sees as the company's "tremendous potential," Wendt adds, "I absolutely plan on making it to the year 2000." •
Wendt Corp. is one young equipment company that knows how to think big. Armed with a detailed business plan and new products, it aims to become a major force in the international market.