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After building his fluorescent light bulbrecycling company, H.T.R. Inc., into a national playef with customers thatinclude , Walgreens, and Dufner sold the business in March to Houston-basedr an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’z revenue reached $6 million last 17 times more thanthe $350,000 the companu made when Dufner bought it in December 1999. A decadw ago, the business recycled about 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a month to keep hazardous mercury out of landfills andwaterd supplies.
That number reached about 18 million bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minorityg partner and chief operating officer, decided they needecd to either invest a large amount of capital to open additiona l recycling facilities or find a strategic partner or buyer for thei r business. Dufner turned to lifelong friend James Stuaryt ofin Clayton. Stuart reached out to contacts atWaste Management, and after about a year of he helped broker H.T.R.’s sale.
Dufner estimated fluorescent bulb recycling isa $100 millionh to $150 million Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimore notexd that garbage disposal is a $52 billion industryh and medical waste disposal accounts for another $3 billion to $4 Add-on services such as recycling can help a company win additionalk market share. “One of Waste Management’s core goals is to grow its medica waste business toabouyt $300 million in revenue in the next 24 Hoffman said. “Now they can walk into health-carer facilities and hospitals and offeer to dispose of their medical regular trash and also theirfluorescent bulbs, which for a hospital is no smalpl thing.
” Waste Management, North America’s largestf waste disposal company, posted net income of $1.0o billion on revenue of $13.4 billion last year and employw about 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granitr City and St. Louis, attending and at In 1991, he bought one of the first franchisex ofEarth City-based Dent a company that provides paintless dent removal for Dufner moved to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgiz and Alabama. But in 1998, Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizard and proceedeed to buy outits franchisees.
Dufner sold his business for aboutg $5 million, and at age 45 foune himself looking for a new In 1999, while at the Lake of the Dufner struck up a conversation with an employere of H.T.R., a three-year-old company then basedx in the small town of Golden City in southwest A new federal law regulatinhg the management of wast containing hazardous materials such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were short on funds to take advantag of potential growth. Dufner bought them out “for a very low and took over the business as Dufnerrecruited Kohout, a friend who owned a gun stors in St.
Louis and was familiafr with dealing with government regulators, to help run the business and expane its service area nationwide. They invested in some tractor-trailers and started picking up burned-out fluorescent bulbzs from all over the countrt and hauling them back to Missourifor processing. Over the next few they relocated the plant to its current locatioin Kaiser, Mo., near Lake As Dufner improved customer service and the speed of waste pickup using third-party freight companies, business boomed. Beginning in H.T.R. secured contracts with Wal-Mart to pick up and recyclwe used bulbs.
Other large several colleges and universities, and states such as Iowa and Missourk also signed upwith H.T.R. All of the materia in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up — mercury, metal and glass was recycled. None went to landfills. But with the Dufner and Kohout also found themselves facing a Expand to keep up withincreasing volume, or find someonde who could do so for “The right way to do it would be to builsd two more recycling plants, one on the West Coast and one on the East to cut transportation distances and freight Dufner said. “Ray and I can’t be in three placesz at one time.
It was goinhg to require a lot more capitalo to open two new facilities and managrethem properly.” So Dufner, who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyer last year and eventuallyg struck the deal with Wastee Management. “We thought would make a good fitfor us,” said Rick senior business director for Waste Management’s WM Lamptrackert division. “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the countrystillk isn’t recycled properly, and that’s where we thinok the upside is.
” The and many statews are targeting a fluorescenty recycling goal of about 75 percent, Kohout Some 800 million fluorescent lamps burn out each and now millions of residential light sockets are also switching from incandesceng to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Although Missouri does not requirse residential recyclingof CFLs, many statesw do, he said. “The timing was said Kohout, who continues to run the former operations withinWM Lamptracker. “We are now the largestf lamp recycler in the and Waste Management is really pushing the sustainabilitg andrecycling front. We’vr had nine years of double-digit and we’ve just gotten started.
” As for he is building a home in Ladue and has notdecidec what, if anything, he will do “Am I looking for something? Possibly, but not Dufner said. “That’s how H.T.R. I wasn’t really looking and then it fell inmy
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