Headlines
4/13/10 Manitoba's joint venture Sunnking Electronics Recycling Earth Day Event
Technology to Ecology – Earth Day 2010 Event
Sunnking Buffalo, WNY’s largest electronic recycler along with Re-Tree WNY are teaming up with a number of WNY employers for an Earth Day program called “Technology to Ecology” the week of April 19-23. “Technology to Ecology” will allow employees of the participating companies to bring any electronics (PC’s, laptops, keyboards, mice, printers, etc.) and other household items such as small appliances, metal desks & furniture, pots & pans, tools, etc. with them to work where they will be collected for recycling. Proceeds from the scrap will be donated to a local charity, Re-Tree WNY, to purchase trees that will be planted in public spaces throughout the area. Recycling this material will eliminate large amounts of toxic materials from local landfills, ensure that the material is properly recycled and generate revenue to continue the replanting of trees in the public spaces devastated by the October Storm of 2006.
Adam Shine, Sales Manager for Sunnking Buffalo notes “Most people want to recycle their old electronics and household items, but they don’t because the collection events are so inconvenient. This year, thousands of Western New Yorkers will have the chance to bring their obsolete material to work.”
Sunnking provides removal and recycling services for hundreds of local businesses and school districts throughout Western New York, but residential clients must deliver to Sunnking’s facility. “This year, that problem will be eliminated” states Shine “and the community will have a lot of new trees as a result.”
Employers from Buffalo, West Seneca, Lancaster, Hamburg, Amherst and Cheektowaga have already agreed to participate and there is still time for any company that wishes to be involved in the event. Please contact Sunnking directly at 716.685.4577 for more information.
Check out the event poster by clicking here
Check out the Ecology and Environment Newsletter here
12/13/09 The Loss of a Dear Friend R.I.P. Joseph Baker
We are deeply saddened today as we discovered that our former partner and friend, Joseph Baker has passed away. Joseph was 88 years old and was a partner in our business until he was 85. Joe started with the company in 1955 and played a key role in its growth and current success. For those in the industry that knew Joe (and many do) he was kind, caring and relentless in his pursuit to make new friends and land the next deal. Joe will be greatly missed as a partner, mentor and friend.
1/16/09 Money in the Metals
Scrap metal prepped for melting, re-use in recycling
Workers at Manitoba Corp. are busy filling cotton bags with copper chops, which were processed there. A huge bin of the stuff is parked behind them, and the handle of a giant metal scoop sticks out of it. The crew fits cotton bags around a spout. Ten pounds of copper falls into it.
It looks like they’re bagging coffee. But the aroma about the place isn’t java at all. It’s propane, from a fleet of busy forklifts.
Manitoba Corp. takes unprocessed scrap metal and removes contaminants such as tar-based insulation to be recycled. The company also reduces the size of items to make them suitable for re-melting or dissolving.
The coffee bags are sent to a customer who drops them into a unit to melt the copper inside. The cotton burns away nice and clean.
The plant is full of pallets with three-foot square copper sheets, each weighing around 300 pounds. Sometimes, these are cut to size for customers to feed into machines to melt copper.
Other times entire pallets, weighing around 7,000 pounds, are sent to customers capable of melting an entire sheet or bundle.
In another area, shaped like hay bales, are bundles of uncleaned copper wire, waiting to be cleaned and made into smaller, shoebox-sized bricks for customers.
These briquettes gleam as if the shiniest pennies were unwound and woven from their threads. Contrasting this are pockets of black empty space creating a roller coaster of interlacing, twisting, looping wires.
At a glance the briquettes appear lightweight, as if one could be picked up with one hand. But each weighs about 50 pounds.
History: Solomon Shine founded S. Shine and Sons in 1916. He began earning a living picking up rags, waste paper and metals from people’s homes. He’d sort and sell it.
He earned enough to buy a horse and buggy, then eventually a fleet of horses and buggies. His son Nathan earned a law degree from the University at Buffalo in 1932, practiced law, then joined the company in 1939. He turned his focus on non-ferrous metals after WWII, when synthetic fabrics like nylon, dacron and rayon made rag recycling less necessary.
Nathan’s son Richard, who today is CEO, began working there in 1970.
The name was changed to Manitoba Corp. when headquartered on Manitoba Street in Buffalo and re-launched as a metals company. The company moved to Lancaster in 1991.
It also has a smaller facility in St. Louis, Mo., operates a few joint ventures, and has a contract with a company to disassemble photocopiers in California. For retail scrap trade, it runs Lancaster Recycling & Sales Co.
Principals: Richard Shine is CEO. His son, Brian, is president.
No. of employees: Sixty. In addition to the 50 in Lancaster, 10 work in St. Louis.
Revenues: $65 million in 2008. From a volume of materials handled perspective, Brian Shine anticipates revenues to be down in 2009.
“Due to a reduction in commodity values, we’re optimistic volumes in 2009 will be the same or increased from 2008,” Brian Shine said. “The reason I’m so optimistic moving forward is the experience of my father and the enthusiasm of my brother Adam, who joined the company in March as sales manager.”
Biggest Expenditure: In 2006, the company purchased a $400,000 high-speed shredder, and a $100,000 crane to pick up copper pieces and chop them. They are adjacent to each other in the Lancaster plant.
It prepares materials for the chopping line by loading wires or other raw materials into the shredder to reduce size.
From there it goes to other places in the plant.
“It makes our process more efficient,” Brian Shine said. “Rather than feeding long pieces of wire into the chopping machines, it makes the shape of pieces more uniform.”
Customers: Typically, customers in steel, aluminum, copper, brass and nickel industries have Manitoba Corp. cut copper sheets to size or ground into smaller pieces. They’ll use these to make a copper-based alloy or to use copper as an addition to something else they’re manufacturing.
11/19/08 Manitoba Corporation among WNY’s Top Private Companies
Manitoba Corporation was selected as one of Western New York's Top Private Companies by Business First of Buffalo.
On November 19, 2008, Manitoba Corporation received an award for being one of Western New York's Top Private Companies in 2008. Manitoba was ranked # 28 down from the prior year of # 21...
8/14/07 Electronics recycling division launched
Integrated Recycling Services (A joint venture company owned 50% by Manitoba) has partnered with Sunnking Inc to form a new company called Sunnking Associates. Sunnking Associates will be based initially out of Manitoba's main facility in Lancaster, NY. Sunnking will focus efforts on developing a state of the art full service electronics recycling company. Please contact Adam Shine for more information 716 685-7000 ext. 228
1/16/07 Business Aviation Helps Metal Recycler Manitoba Expand Its Opportunities
Reprinted From: Business Aviation Insider, Premier Issue
Some specialized tools help Manitoba, a family-owned metals recycling company in Lancaster, NY, stay competitive.
On a recent tour of the company’s facilities, president Richard Shine proudly displayed several implements – a unique crane, a second machine that houses a “chopping line” and a metal scanner – all of which help Manitoba process more scrap types into more end products with a greater level of purity than many other recyclers can.
Shine’s list of must-have business tools includes another asset located at nearby Niagara Falls Airport: a Mitsubishi MU-2 Solitaire. “My ability to fly an airplane is what helped us survive,” Shine says.
Shine needs an airplane because the host of Western New York manufacturers that provided so much of the scrap metal to Manitoba a generation ago have disappeared. Shine says, “Back in 1970, our company had 20 plants in the Buffalo area that provided scrap for our business. Today,we have one. The scrap has dried up; it’s disappeared.”
Looking to New Horizons
That’s where business aviation comes in. Manitoba’s aircraft has helped the company expand its boundaries for doing business, thereby increasing its supply base. “From the time Manitoba was founded in 1916 until 1971, our business was only conducted within 40 miles of our plant,” Shine explained.
When Shine joined Manitoba in 1970, he had a solid understanding of aircraft operations and how aviation could help the company. He had flown for six years on active duty with the U.S. Air Force, and then started flying for the local reserve unit in Niagara Falls. Shine also held a half interest in a Beech Debonair.
“With business aircraft, we could expand our operations beyond the local area,” Shine recalls.
Within his first year at Manitoba, Shine convinced his father, then the company’s president, to put the Debonair to work for the business. Shine and a partner flew to Massena,NY, to find new suppliers, and that trip established business aviation as a key component in Manitoba’s company strategy.
“When we first started doing business in other places,we would start at 6:00 a.m., and we’d be at somebody’s desk by 8:30. We’d spend time with him, and maybe try to make a second call in that same city. Over the lunch hour, we’d fly to another city. We’d make one or two calls there, and sometimes even have dinner on the way home with another customer.
"We’d get home at 10:00 p.m.“ We covered a lot of ground,” Shine says. “We were able to see a lot of people; we didn’t land every account, but we did get enough of them, and we survived.”
Within two years of their first business flight, Shine and his partner acquired a Piper Aztec. Over the next few years, Shine utilized a half-dozen different twin Cessna’s before purchasing the company’s first MU-2K in 1981. “We’d just opened a new, second operation in St. Louis, and the aircraft gave us access to that office, and an entrée into the Midwest,” Shine says.
A recession that year caused productivity dips among Manitoba’s suppliers, which led Shine to sell the MU-2 in 1982, a decision he now regrets. “The business climate forced us to get rid of the airplane like so many companies do when they economize, “Shine says. “But maybe it would have been smarter to make more trips, to have tried to go out and find more business.”
Fortunately, the loss of Manitoba’s airplane did not prevent Shine from keeping his flying skills sharp – his tenure with the reserve unit was now passing into its second decade. So when Manitoba began to grow after three years of struggle, Shine was again ready to incorporate business aircraft into the company’s operations. In 1985, he acquired a Cessna 421. Ten years later, he replaced that with another Solitaire. At the same time, he looked for a resource that could help businesspeople who operate their own aircraft. His search took him to the National Business Aviation Association.
New Aircraft, New Resources Needed
“I knew of NBAA back in my early days in business,” Shine recalls.” But, I was flying piston engine airplanes and I didn’t feel that NBAA represented my interests. That was a perception, obviously, more than a reality – if you take NBAA’s Membership Directory and leaf through it, you see all kinds of businesses, even single-engine piston operators that are Members.
“Anyway, in 1995, when we bought the second Solitaire, I thought, ‘I really should be a Member of NBAA.’”
Joining NBAA was a good decision for Shine.“The dues are well worth the price of admission for the lobbying services you get, especially today. There’s much more of a threat to the way we do business – because of proposals on user fees, taxes and other issues – than there was 25 years ago.”
NBAA also has been an operational resource for Shine. When asked to speak at a meeting of MU-2 owners last year, Shine wanted to help other owners establish a list of operational best practices. He decided to discuss his own operations manual.
“Most of the people who fly this [type of] airplane don’t think about what you’re supposed to do if you’re inside the outer marker and all of a sudden the glide slope fails,” Shine says. “An operations manual can help you plan for that kind of situation.”
For source material to support his manual, Shine tapped his more than 20 years of military experience (concluding his reserve career as a colonel). Shine also turned to NBAA’s generic ops manual for information and a template for his own product. “[My] document has a disclaimer stating that regulations take precedence, and there are certain things that are specific to MU-2 operators,” Shine says. “But in general, it’s suitable for any owner/operator. If even one person flies using these procedures, it could prevent an accident.”
Looking to the Future
Despite the challenges facing his company and business aviation, Shine is optimistic about the future.
“Our aircraft has allowed us to go outside our region and generate the product we need to stay in business. We’re able to make quick trips, see the right people, and yet be back to mind the store. That’s been the secret of our success, and I’m confident it will continue to be so.”
Does Manitoba still need NBAA? “NBAA will always be of value to me. I think there are going to be more smaller companies like ours getting into business aviation, and joining NBAA. For guys like me, anything that can be done to offer educational programs, training resources and other Member services and benefits will be well worth it.”
