By Kenzo Kawasaki
 |
| Image courtesy USAF |
While my company doesn’t sell balers, we do make the
controls and hydraulic power unit for them.
But since balers can make a huge difference in the amount of material
recycled by a business, I thought I’d take the time this week to discuss them.
Whether you realize it or not, you’ve seen a baler if
you’ve ever venture behind a Wynn-Dixie supermarket or Lowes. A vertical baler is the huge machine you see
parked near the back of the store. Used at most grocery stores and big box
stores like Walmart or Home Depot the reason these behemoth machines are there
is to help large retailers deal with the large quantity of corrugated cardboard
these businesses produce. Instead of
letting all the packing material eat up a lot of useful space, big retailers
bale the cardboard into 800-1700 lbs bales that not only take up a lot less
space, but these bricks can be sold to mills that will in turn press the
material into new packaging. Such
operations typically install a 60x40-inch closed-end baler that costs upward of
$10,000 to purchase, while high-capacity open-end extrusion balers can cost
$100,000 or more. The reason that big
box stores spend this kind of money is because it typically only takes them less
than a year to recoup their investment.
