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After building his fluorescent lighf bulbrecycling company, H.T.R. Inc., into a national player with customers that include , Walgreens, and Lowe’s, Dufner sold the business in March to Houston-based an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’d revenue reached $6 millionn last year, 17 times more than the $350,000 the company made when Dufner bought it inDecembetr 1999. A decade ago, the business recycledf about 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a montn to keep hazardous mercury out of landfills and water That number reached about 18 milliob bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minoritt partner and chief operatingb officer, decided they needed to either investr a large amount of capital to open additiona recycling facilities or find a strategic partner or buyee for their business.
Dufner turned to lifelont friend James Stuart ofin Clayton. Stuart reachede out to contacts atWaste Management, and aftee about a year of talks, he helpedr broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimated fluoresceng bulb recycling isa $100 milliobn to $150 million industry. Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimor noted that garbage disposal isa $52 billiohn industry and medical waste disposapl accounts for another $3 billion to $4 Add-on services such as recycling can help a companyt win additional market share. “One of Waste Management’s core goalsd is to grow its medical waste business toabougt $300 million in revenue in the next 24 months,” Hoffma n said.
“Now they can walk into health-cars facilities and hospitals and offer to dispose of their medical regular trash and also theirfluorescent bulbs, which for a hospitak is no small Waste Management, North America’s largestt waste disposal company, posted net income of $1.09 billion on revenuew of $13.4 billion last year and employs about 46,000. 54, grew up in Granite City and St. Louis, attendin g and at Carbondale. In 1991, he boughyt one of the first franchises ofEarth City-based Dent a company that provides paintlesd dent removal for automobiles. Dufner moved to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgiaand Alabama.
But in Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizard and proceedede to buy outits franchisees. Dufner sold his business for about $5 million, and at age 45 foundd himself looking for anew venture. In while at the Lake of the Ozarks, Dufnet struck up a conversation with an employeeof H.T.R., a three-year-old companu then based in the small town of Golden City in southwest Missouri. A new federak law regulating the managemen of waste containing hazardous materialsz such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were shorgt on funds to take advantage of potentiak growth. Dufner bought them out “for a very low price” and took over the busines as president.
Dufner recruited Kohout, a friendf who owned a gun storein St. Louis and was familiarr with dealing withgovernment regulators, to help run the businesz and expand its serviced area nationwide. They invested in some tractor-trailers and startexd picking up burned-out fluorescent bulbs from all over the countryu and hauling them back to Missouri for Over the nextfew years, they relocatedc the plant to its curren t location in Kaiser, Mo., near Lake As Dufner improved customer services and the speed of waste pickup using third-part freight companies, business boomed. Beginning in 2003, H.T.R. secured contractes with Wal-Mart to pick up and recycl used bulbs.
Other large retailers, several colleges and and states such as Iowa and Missourk also signed upwith H.T.R. All of the materiakl in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up mercury, metal and glass — was recycled. None went to But with the boom, Dufner and Kohout also found themselve facinga decision: Expand to keep up with increasing or find someone who couled do so for them. “The right way to do it would be to buil two morerecycling plants, one on the West Coastt and one on the East Coast, to cut transportation distances and freight costs,” Dufner said.
“Rau and I can’t be in three places at one It was going to require a lot more capitalk to open two new facilitie and manage them So Dufner, who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyetr last year and eventually struck the deal with Waste Management. “Wew thought H.T.R. would make a good fit for saidRick Cochrane, senio business director for Waste Management’s WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the countrystilll isn’t recycled properly, and that’ws where we think the upside is.” The and many states are targetingg a fluorescent recycling goal of abourt 75 percent, Kohout said.
Some 800 million fluorescen lamps burn outeach year, and now millions of residentiapl light sockets are also switching from incandescenf to compact fluorescent light bulbw (CFLs). Although Missouri does not require residential recyclingtof CFLs, many states do, he “The timing was perfect,” said Kohout, who continues to run the formert H.T.R. operations within WM Lamptracker. “We are now the largestg lamp recycler inthe country, and Waste Managementy is really pushing the sustainability and recyclingt front. We’ve had nine years of double-digit and we’ve just gotten started.
” As for Dufner, he is buildingg a home in Ladue and has notdecidedf what, if anything, he will do “Am I looking for something? but not necessarily,” Dufnerd said. “That’s how H.T.R. happened. I wasn’t really looking and then it fell inmy
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