Red-Metal Maven

In his 67-year career, Harry Turkel has established himself as a pioneer in the
copper scrap business—and even at 86, he’s still at it.

By Si Wakesberg

An industry executive once said about Harry Turkel, “He’s a broker’s broker.” When asked to explain, the executive added, “He’s always there, ready for action.” It was a high compliment.
   “Actually, I wasn’t a broker,” clarifies the 86-year-old Turkel, “I was a buyer of copper scrap, and that’s what I’ve been doing for more than 60 years.”
   While you can dispute his precise job title, there’s no disputing that Turkel has been a pioneer in the copper scrap market in his 67-year career. Now, he’s one of a fast-vanishing tribe of veterans in that niche.
   This Brooklyn kid got his start in the metals business in 1935 when he was hired as a runner and file clerk at International Minerals and Metals Corp. (IMM) (New York City), then a major buyer of copper scrap for U.S. refiners and smelters. Turkel was also studying math at the College of the City of New York at the time, so he started taking evening classes to accommodate his new job.
   In short order, IMM promoted Turkel to the task of decoding cables, an important job in the days before faxes and 
e-mails. Subse-quently, he joined the firm’s accounting department, working with the famed Theodore Gruen, an authority in the copper field and a czar-like figure in his department.
   World War II interrupted Turkel’s burgeoning career. He joined the Army and, thanks to his college experience and fluency in French, became an interpreter for the 4th Armored Division when it met the Russians just outside of Prague. Throughout Turkel’s four years of service, IMM kept him on the payroll at a nominal salary.
   After the war ended, the State Department offered Turkel a job as a courier in Paris. Though that offer was tempting, the scrap business had entered his blood, prompting him to turn down the Paris post and return to IMM.
   “That’s when I became a scrap buyer,” he says. In those postwar years, IMM was supplying copper scrap to several Phelps Dodge Corp. refineries, with Turkel buying material specifically for the firm’s refinery in Laurel Hill, N.Y., on Long Island. Competitors for the same scrap included Federated Metals (Asarco), Amax Copper Inc., North American Smelting Co., Barth Smelting Corp., and others. In the background loomed large export houses like Philipp Brothers and Associated Metals & Minerals Corp.
   Turkel recalls vividly his early days as a scrap buyer, noting, “I used to take the bus to Newark and buy radiators, bearings, No. 1 and No. 2 copper, and light copper all over New Jersey.” Later, he began to journey into the South, a territory yet to be discovered by northern scrap buyers. “In my first year with the company as a buyer,” he recalls, “I bought 17,700 tons of copper scrap.”
   The metal-trading world then was quite different from today’s market, of course. “When I first came on the scene,” Turkel says, “there were no real copper scrap brokers in the business. Yes, there were what we called ‘1/8-cent brokers’ in the export field. They would sell their scrap to large exporters who would then give them a commission of 1/8 cent per pound.” Another market difference was that “prices were set by producers, not the LME or Comex,” Turkel notes. “It was a different world.”
   Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Turkel became an established member of a clique of famed copper scrap buyers that included Paul Fine of Federated Metals (Asarco), Mel Kriegel of Amax Copper Inc., and others.
Along the way, Turkel helped train up-and-coming copper traders. He particularly remembers taking Leonard Levine (who later founded Leonard Levine Metals Corp.) on a trip through New York state to show him the process of copper-scrap purchasing. “Lenny, who became a great copper man, was a protégé of mine,” Turkel says proudly.
   Throughout his career, Turkel was active in industry trade groups, especially the National Association of Secondary Material Industries (later renamed the National Association of Recycling Industries). Though he never held an office in the group, he served on the association’s metals division, focusing on issues such as nonferrous specifications.
   Turkel’s association involvement included being a frequent participant—and fierce competitor—in recreational activities at meetings and playdays. Old-timers readily can recall a trio—Harry Turkel, Paul Fine, and Emanuel “Manny” Spitzer—young, dashing tennis players in their white outfits, stealing the show at many events. “We were pretty hot stuff,” he says with a smile.
   Turkel’s 28 years with IMM, working with Theodore Gruen, weren’t always smooth sailing. When Gruen had a heart attack, Turkel took over until he recovered and returned to work. Eventually, Turkel and Manny Spitzer—a close friend and fellow IMM employee—resolved to break out on their own.
   In September 1963, that’s just what they did, founding their own business under the name Atlantic Metal Trading Co. They purchased IMM’s scrap plant in Yonkers, N.Y.—which Spitzer had managed for years—and set about trying to operate it successfully. It was an uphill struggle at first, financially and operationally, but they survived the rough period thanks to the help of industry friends, Turkel says.
   Atlantic Metal’s operation specialized in processing insulated wire and cable, stripping and burning it for sale to copper consumers in the Northeast. The operation also produced some lead ingot. While Spitzer continued to manage the physical plant, Turkel led the buying and selling tasks, and all was well—until 1982.
   That year, OSHA forced Atlantic Metal to close its plant due to emissions problems. Though the company had spent “large amounts” of money on afterburners and other environmental-control technology, the emissions from its wire-burning furnaces continued to surpass acceptable pollution limits, Turkel recounts.
   The problem stemmed from the PVC and Teflon insulation on some scrapped wire and cable, which created toxic emissions when burned. “Nothing worked in terms of reducing the toxicity in the air,” Turkel says. The issue was exacerbated by the fact that residential housing had grown up all around the Atlantic Metal plant. 
   In the end, Turkel states, “I was very happy to give up the operation. I didn’t want to contaminate the air.”
   With the plant closed, Turkel—then 66—and Spitzer decided to retire. Turkel’s retirement was to be short-lived, however, lasting only a few months. That’s because Michael Rosoff, Turkel’s son-in-law, asked him to help launch—what else?—a copper scrap brokerage business. Thus ended Turkel’s retirement and began Atlantic Copper Co. Inc.
   Today, Turkel serves as CEO and Rosoff as president of Atlantic Copper, which brokers brass-mill scrap and all grades of copper scrap. Despite his CEO title, Turkel says he is more of a consultant these days, spending six months of the year in Coconut Creek, Fla., and six months at his home in Somers, N.Y., a quiet town nestled in the Westchester suburbs.
   When not in Florida, you can find him “most days” talking on the phone at Atlantic Copper’s offices in Somers, which are just around the corner from his home.
   If you can get Turkel talking in between phone calls, it becomes clear that he’s truly a man of a thousand stories, a veritable scrap historian who can reel off a panorama of metal events, names, dates, prices, and more. Asked to name some of the industry veterans who influenced him, for instance, Turkel responds immediately, “My admiration for Sidney Danziger was and still is unbounded. He was our benefactor and adviser. Few people really knew the extent of Sidney’s generosity to so many in this industry.”
   Turkel also names Jake Feldman of Commercial Metals Co. and Paul Fine of Federated Metals (Asarco) as major influences on Atlantic Metal’s success. And, of course, he emphasizes that it was the friendship and partnership of Manny Spitzer that helped make Atlantic Metal a going concern for its 19 years.
   In his 67-year career, Turkel has seen many changes in the metals business, some good, others not so good.
   The old major companies—Asarco, Amax, and so on—have lost their potency or vanished, he notes. Also, “receiving plants used to bend over backwards in their dealing with scrap shippers,” he says. “Today, it’s all cut and dried, it’s all 100-percent quality.” There’s also less camaraderie in the industry, unlike the early days when, as he puts it, “you had the grand support of people you did business with.”
   Turkel also observes that today’s young scrap buyers are often thrown into their jobs without much, if any, industry-specific education or hands-on experience. In his day, Turkel recounts, “we weren’t made buyers until we had our hands wet in the field,” with a solid grounding in the nuances of scrap quality, consuming operations, markets, and more.
   Among other changes, Turkel continues, “the market today doesn’t give the broker a chance to do the volume he needs, as in the past.” Now, the metals business is like a poker game, and you must have sufficient chips or get frozen out, he states. What has caused this change? Partly the dominance of the LME, but mostly government intrusion in the way of environmental and OSHA regulations, he points out.
   Despite his links with the past, Turkel is a realist. “A new generation has come up,” he says. “They’re all about the same age, they know each other, some even went to school together. My son-in-law has friends in the companies we do business with, he’s congenial with that young group, talks their language.”
   Though son-in-law Michael Rosoff truly runs Atlantic Copper these days, Turkel’s love for the copper market compels him to keep at least a hand in the action. He can no longer play his beloved tennis (though he did until he was 84 1/2 years old), but he still likes to solve cryptograms. Also, he and his wife of 54 years, Anne, have enjoyed attending Elderhostels, sopping up some culture.
   Despite his 86 years, Turkel seems to have no intention of slowing down. “If I really was retired and had the time,” he says, “I’d go back to school.” Given his career record—and his love for the business—it’s unlikely that Turkel’s “real” retirement will ever come.

All About Harry
Born: Oct. 2, 1916.
Education: Attended the College of the City of New York for six years, mostly taking evening classes to accommodate his work schedule. Pursued a B.S. degree in math, then switched to an accounting curriculum but never completed his degree due to work commitments.
Career: Hired in 1935 by International Minerals and Metals Corp., where he worked until 1963 when he founded Atlantic Metal Trading Co. with Emanuel “Manny” Spitzer. Retired for a brief time in 1982 when Atlantic Metal closed. That same year, Turkel and son-in-law Michael Rosoff founded Atlantic Copper Co. Inc.
Family: Married Anne Lessinger in 1948. Two daughters (Linda and Nancy), one son (Robert), and four grandchildren. •

Si Wakesberg is New York bureau chief for Scrap.•