It's been just three months since we announced the acquisition of our 260,000 square-foot industrial facility in Stockton, California.  You can read our initial blog post announcement here. In today's post, part of a continuing series of posts about the creation of our new electronics recycling plant, we take a look at the progress we’ve made and the phases that lie ahead.

The realtor hands you the keys and says “congratulations!” That moment always marks the end of one phase and the beginning of another. This was certainly the case for us back in March as we took ownership of 2222 S. Sinclair Avenue, Stockton, California. Stockton is an ideal location for our primary West Coast electronics recycling operations. We’ve just been given the official green light by the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control to begin operations, which means we can now start Phase 2 of our move-in. Let’s review the progress thus far…

A great location and ideally suited to its new role

The Stockton facility was a former metal-stamping plant for the automotive industry and is superb for its intended function as the primary receiving and processing facility for the country’s largest and most efficient electronics recycling operation. It’s centrally located for all our customers located in California, Nevada and Oregon, and has excellent highway access. Additionally, we even have railway access, which will be extremely useful once we have the plant operating at full bore. Speaking of which, the plant is big enough to take us right through to 25 million pounds of e-waste per month, with all operations and storage under one roof. There’s nothing like this here in the United States and we’re very excited about the potential it offers for our OEM, VAR, and recycler customers and partners.

Initial preparations

As soon as we took possession of the Stockton plant, we began Phase 1 of the project: readying the plant for its most important occupants — people. Due to its previous life as a manufacturing facility, the building itself is well-suited to its new role as a recycling plant. It has excellent office spaces, a large break room, locker rooms with showers and all the amenities you’d expect in a modern office. The plant area itself is also well above what you might expect in the recycling industry. It’s completely enclosed and well insulated, which means our employees on the lines will be working in a safe, well-lit environment. It also has upgraded electrical and compressed-air systems, and even massive overhead industrial bridge cranes. After moving out all of the remnant foundations of its previous machinery, we began work on upgrading the receiving dock to make it secure. This is extremely important for our enterprise and VAR customers, since this is an area where all in-bound electronics, some of which contain sensitive information, will be stored prior to processing.

Next steps: getting the lines up and running

In our next blog post, we’ll take a look at Phase 2 of the project, in which we ready the CRT and CPU dismantling operations.

Publication Date: 7/26/2011