Bright idea: Marvin Dufner makes millions recycling bulbs - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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After building his fluorescent light bulbrecyclinfg company, H.T.R. Inc., into a national player with customerzs thatinclude , Walgreens, and Dufner sold the business in March to Houston-basedx an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’s revenue reachefd $6 million last year, 17 times more than the $350,000 the companuy made when Dufner bought it inDecembed 1999. A decade ago, the business recyclex about 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a mont h to keep hazardous mercury out of landfillsx andwater supplies.
That number reached about 18 million bulbsd a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minority partner and chiev operating officer, decided they needed to eithet invest a large amount of capitao to open additional recycling facilitiesa or find a strategic partner or buyer for thei r business. Dufner turned to lifelong friend James Stuartr ofin Clayton. Stuart reached out to contacts atWaste Management, and aftedr about a year of talks, he helpecd broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimatedx fluorescent bulb recycling isa $100 million to $150 milliobn industry.
Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimorr noted that garbage disposal isa $52 billionh industry and medical waste disposal accounts for another $3 billio n to $4 billion. Add-on services such as recycling can help a companyg win additionalmarket share. “One of Waste Management’s core goal s is to grow its medical wastse business toabout $300 million in revenue in the next 24 Hoffman said. “Now they can walk into health-carer facilities and hospitals and offer to dispose of theidrmedical waste, regular tras and also their fluorescent which for a hospital is no smalol thing.
” Waste Management, North America’s largest waste disposaol company, posted net income of $1.09 billion on revenu of $13.4 billion last year and employs abou 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granite City and St. attending and at Carbondale. In he bought one of the first franchisea ofEarth City-based Dent Wizard, a company that providea paintless dent removal for Dufner moved to Atlanta to run his territort of Georgia and Alabama. But in Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizard and proceedec to buy outits franchisees. Dufnef sold his business for about $5 and at age 45 founcd himself looking for anew venture.
In 1999, while at the Lake of the Dufner struck up a conversation with an employeedof H.T.R., a three-year-old company then based in the smallo town of Golden City in southwest Missouri. A new federal law regulating the management of waste containing hazardous materiale such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were short on fundsa to take advantage of potentiap growth. Dufner bought them out “for a very low and took over the businessas president. Dufnerd recruited Kohout, a friend who owned a gun storein St. Louixs and was familiar with dealing withgovernmenft regulators, to help run the business and expand its servicw area nationwide.
They invested in some tractor-trailers and started picking up burned-oug fluorescent bulbs from all over the countr y and hauling them back to Missouriofor processing. Over the next few years, they relocated the planrt to its current locationin Kaiser, Mo., near Lake Ozark. As Dufner improved customer service and the speed of wast pickupusing third-party freight companies, business Beginning in 2003, H.T.R. secured contracts with Wal-Mar t to pick up and recycle used bulbs. Other large retailers, several colleges and universities, and states such as Iowa and Missouri also signed upwith H.T.R. All of the material in the bulbsw H.T.R.
picked up — mercury, metal and glass — was None went to landfills. But with the boom, Dufnet and Kohout also found themselves facing a Expand to keep up withincreasing volume, or find someoner who could do so for “The right way to do it wouls be to build two more recyclinbg plants, one on the West Coasg and one on the East Coast, to cut transportatiomn distances and freight Dufner said. “Ray and I can’t be in three places at one time. It was goin to require a lot more capital to open two new facilities and managewthem properly.
” So Dufner, who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyer last year and eventually struck the deal with Wasts Management. “We thought H.T.R. would make a good fit for saidRick Cochrane, senior businessa director for Waste Management’sz WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percen t of fluorescent lighting in the countrystilp isn’t recycled properly, and that’s where we think the upsidw is.” The and many states are targeting a fluorescenf recycling goal of about 75 percent, Kohouy said.
Some 800 million fluorescent lamps burn outeach year, and now millions of residentiakl light sockets are also switching from incandescenft to compact fluorescent light bulbs Although Missouri does not require residentiak recycling of CFLs, many states do, he “The timing was perfect,” said who continues to run the former H.T.R. operationsa within WM Lamptracker. “We are now the largest lamp recycler in the and Waste Management is really pushing the sustainability andrecycling We’ve had nine years of double-digitf growth, and we’ve just gotten started.” As for he is building a home in Ladue and has not decidecd what, if anything, he will do next.
“Am I looking for something? Possibly, but not necessarily,” Dufnedr said. “That’s how H.T.R. happened. I wasn’yt really looking and then it fell inmy