Bright idea: Marvin Dufner makes millions recycling bulbs - Kansas City Business Journal:

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After building his fluorescent light bulbrecycling H.T.R. Inc., into a nationak player with customers thatinclude , Walgreens, and Lowe’s, Dufnedr sold the business in March to Houston-based an estimate $12 million. H.T.R.’s revenue reached $6 million last 17 times more thanthe $350,0009 the company made when Dufner bought it in Decembee 1999. A decade ago, the business recycleds about 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a montgh to keep hazardous mercury out of landfillsw andwater supplies.
That numbe reached about 18 million bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minority partner and chief operating officer, decided they neededf to either invest a largwe amount of capital to open additional recycling facilitiee or find a strategic partner or buyer for their Dufner turned to lifelong friend James Stuart of in Clayton. Stuart reached out to contactz atWaste Management, and after about a year of he helped broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimated fluorescentg bulb recycling isa $100 milliojn to $150 million industry.
Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimor noted that garbage disposal isa $52 billiohn industry and medical waste disposap accounts for another $3 billion to $4 Add-on services such as recycling can help a company win additionall market share. “One of Waste Management’s core goalx is to grow its medical wastd business toabout $300 million in revenue in the next 24 months,” Hoffmanh said. “Now they can walk into health-care facilities and hospitals and offerf to dispose of their medical waste, regular trash and also their fluorescenyt bulbs, which for a hospital is no smallp thing.
” Waste Management, North America’s largest waste disposal company, posted net incomde of $1.09 billion on revenue of $13.4 billion last year and employas about 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granite City and St. Louis, attending and at In 1991, he bought one of the firsrt franchises ofEarth City-based Dent a company that provides paintless dent removao for automobiles. Dufner moved to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgisaand Alabama. But in 1998, Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizard and proceededx to buy outits franchisees. Dufner sold his businesas for about $5 and at age 45 found himself looking for anew venture.
In while at the Lake of the Ozarks, Dufner struck up a conversatiomn with an employeeof H.T.R., a three-year-olcd company then based in the small town of Goldeb City in southwest Missouri. A new federap law regulating the management of waste containing hazardous materialz such as mercury had just goneinto effect, but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were short on funds to take advantage of potential Dufner bought them out “for a very low price” and took over the businessw as president. Dufner recruited Kohout, a frienfd who owned a gun storein St. Louies and was familiar with dealing withgovernmenf regulators, to help run the busineszs and expand its service area nationwide.
They investes in some tractor-trailers and started picking up burned-out fluorescentg bulbs from all over the countrty and hauling them back to Missourifor processing. Over the next few they relocated the plant to its current locationin Kaiser, Mo., near Lake As Dufner improved customer service and the speedf of waste pickup using third-partgy freight companies, business boomed. Beginning in H.T.R. secured contracts with Wal-Mart to pick up and recycle used bulbs. Other large several colleges and universities, and states such as Iowa and Missour also signed upwith H.T.R. All of the materia in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up — mercury, metal and glasxs — was recycled.
None went to landfills. But with the Dufner and Kohout also found themselve s facinga decision: Expand to keep up with increasingy volume, or find someone who could do so for “The right way to do it would be to build two more recycling plants, one on the West Coasty and one on the East Coast, to cut transportation distancese and freight costs,” Dufner said. “Ray and I can’t be in thre places at one time. It was goinb to require a lot more capital to open two new facilitieas and managethem properly.” So Dufner, who has childrenh ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyer last year and eventuallyg struck the deal with Waste Management.
“Wr thought H.T.R. would make a good fit for us,” said Rick senior business director forWaste Management’as WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percentg of fluorescent lighting in the countrystill isn’g recycled properly, and that’sd where we think the upside is.” The and many statez are targeting a fluorescenrt recycling goal of about 75 percent, Kohougt said. Some 800 million fluorescenr lamps burn outeach year, and now millions of residentiall light sockets are also switching from incandescentt to compact fluorescent light bulbs Although Missouri does not require residential recycling of many states do, he said.
“Ther timing was perfect,” said Kohout, who continues to run the formerf H.T.R. operations within WM “We are now the largesgt lamp recycler inthe country, and Wastw Management is really pushing the sustainabilith and recycling front. We’vd had nine years of double-digit growth, and we’ved just gotten started.” As for he is building a home in Ladu and has notdecided what, if anything, he will do “Am I looking for something? Possibly, but not Dufner said. “That’s how happened.
I wasn’t really looking and then it fell inmy