How to start a timber recycling timber business

Yesterday's blog described the extent of the markets available for timber recycling. Perhaps that has whetted you appetite and you want to start something. It is not difficult.

First the plant. You can start on two paths. One is a big capital investment. The second is low capital cost, but higher operating costs. The second is lower risk path until the demand is proven, at which point you can make the big capital investment.

The capital investment path first. You'll need a large hardstand area on which to store waste timber, and potentially also chip and sawdust. It is important to keep the timber as free as possible from grit, particularly if you want to sell it for particle board manufacture. This hardstand would ideally be made of concrete to avoid being dug up. A load out ramp will also be required.

The plant you need then is a loader (large bucket to bulk out chip and sawdust), a small excavator with a grab to crush timber, and a single pass timber grinder from somebody like HAAS. All told, that will cost $1.5-2m.

The low cost path also needs a loader and an excavator, but the rest is more mundane. A low speed grinder with a magnet on the outfeed conveyor will do the initial size reduction, removing the main steel.

Hammel grinder for processing waste timber, photo from Town of Port Hedland

The "clean" product is then able to be ground using a high speed shredder, also with a magnet, and the finished product is cleaned up using a trommel. Again, with a magnet.

All of the plant used in the low cost path can be dry-hired, and so whilst more expensive to run, this is a good path to develop a market without the enormous upfront investment. More importantly, you can be strategic on what you purchase and what you hire so that you only purchase what can be transferred to an operation involving the single pass grinder.

Irrespective of which path you take, challenges are removing plastics, and perhaps unusually, stainless steel.

Stainless steel is not removed well using magnets, however it is increasingly used for pallet used in shipping. I don't have ready answers for the removal of stainless, but would love to hear suggestions. The best fix is to make sure your market can handle some stainless steel nails.

And so that's it. Simple. Kind of.