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

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After building his fluorescent light bulbrecyclinvg company, H.T.R. Inc., into a nationak player with customers thatinclude , Walgreens, and Lowe’s, Dufner sold the business in March to Houston-based an estimaterd $12 million. H.T.R.’s revenue reached $6 million last year, 17 times more than the $350,0000 the company made when Dufner bought it in December 1999. A decade ago, the businesxs recycled about 30,000 fluorescent bulbes a month to keep hazardouws mercury out of landfills andwater supplies.
That numberd reached about 18 million bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minorituy partner and chief operating officer, decided they neededc to either invest a largd amount of capital to open additional recycling facilitied or find a strategic partner or buyer for theird business. Dufner turned to lifelong friend James Stuart ofin Clayton. Stuarg reached out to contacts atWaste Management, and afterf about a year of talks, he helped broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimated fluorescent bulb recycling isa $100 millio to $150 million industry.
Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimorwe noted that garbage disposal isa $52 billionj industry and medical waste disposal accounts for another $3 billioh to $4 billion. Add-on services such as recycling can help a companhy win additionalmarket share. “One of Waste Management’s core goals is to grow its medical waste business toabout $300 million in revenue in the next 24 months,” Hoffman “Now they can walk into health-care facilities and hospitals and offer to dispose of theirt medical waste, regular trash and also theire fluorescent bulbs, which for a hospitalp is no small thing.
” Waste Management, Nortyh America’s largest waste disposal company, postedr net income of $1.09 billionh on revenue of $13.4 billion last year and employs about 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granite City and St. attending and at Carbondale. In 1991, he bought one of the firsg franchises ofEarth City-based Dent Wizard, a compangy that provides paintless dent removal for Dufner moved to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgia and But in 1998, Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizared and proceeded to buy out its Dufner sold his business for about $5 million, and at age 45 founcd himself looking for a new In 1999, while at the Lake of the Dufner struck up a conversation with an employee of a three-year-old company then based in the small town of Goldenb City in southwest Missouri.
A new federal law regulating the management of waste containing hazardous materialss such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were short on funde to take advantage of potentialk growth. Dufner bought them out “for a very low price” and took over the businesas as president. Dufner recruited Kohout, a friend who owneed a gun storein St. Louia and was familiar with dealing with government to help run the business and expand its servicdarea nationwide. They invested in some tractor-trailers and startecd picking up burned-out fluorescent bulbs from all over the countrh and hauling them back to Missourijfor processing.
Over the next few years, they relocatesd the plant to its current locationin Mo., near Lake Ozark. As Dufner improvec customer service and the speed of waste pickupousing third-party freight companies, businesss boomed. Beginning in 2003, H.T.R. secured contracts with Wal-Mart to pick up and recycl e used bulbs. Other large retailers, severao colleges and universities, and states such as Iowa and Missouri also signeed upwith H.T.R. All of the materiapl in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up — metal and glass — was recycled.
None went to But with the boom, Dufner and Kohout also founf themselves facing a Expand to keep up withincreasing volume, or find someoner who could do so for them. “Thre right way to do it would be to buile two morerecycling plants, one on the West Coast and one on the East to cut transportation distances and freight Dufner said. “Ray and I can’t be in thre places at one time. It was goint to require a lot more capital to open two new facilitiews and managethem properly.” So who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyer last year and eventually struck the deal with Waste Management.
“We thought would make a good fitfor us,” said Rick Cochrane, seniore business director for Waste Management’s WM Lamptracker “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the country stillk isn’t recycled properly, and that’xs where we think the upside is.” The and many states are targetint a fluorescent recycling goal of abouyt 75 percent, Kohout said. Some 800 million fluorescentt lamps burn outeach year, and now millionas of residential light sockets are also switching from incandescen t to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
Althougjh Missouri does not require residential recycling of manystates do, he “The timing was said Kohout, who continues to run the former H.T.R. operationa within WM Lamptracker. “We are now the larges lamp recycler inthe country, and Wastde Management is really pushing the sustainability and recyclingf front. We’ve had nine years of double-digit and we’ve just gotten started.” As for he is building a home in Ladue and has notdecidec what, if anything, he will do next. “Am I lookingy for something? Possibly, but not necessarily,” Dufnedr said. “That’s how H.T.R.
I wasn’t really looking and then it fell inmy