“Breaking Down Walls: S. Slesnick Co. has a history of growing beyond its walls to keep expanding at its Canton, Ohio, facility”

October 2008

By Brian Taylor

Through four generations and more than 80 years of company history, S. Slesnick Co., Canton, Ohio, can proudly point to an important trend: The recycling company is often in need of additional space. The company’s growth in the past 20 years is a testament to the leadership of third-generation recycler Robert Slesnick and his sons Brian and Scott, who represent the fourth generation piloting the family business. Although its past has included metals recycling and its present and future includes plastics recycling, the story of S. Slesnick Co. is most heavily written on paper. 

Family Ties
The Slesnick name has been associated with recycling in Canton since 1924, when Barney Slesnick started collecting recyclable metals, paper and rags. Barney’s son Sidney, who lived to the age of 95, joined the family business and eventually assumed leadership of it. What they created represents the start of not one but two recycling companies spanning four generations of leadership.

Sidney’s sons Robert and Stan began assuming leadership positions in the 1950’s, and their attention to managing two different aspects of the business led to a split between metal and paper recycling operations in 1957. Stan assumed ownership of what is now Slesnick Iron & Metal Inc., which is also based in Canton just 2 miles away from S. Slesnick Co. Robert, and subsequently his sons, has focused on paper recycling, leading to several decades of growth and expansion for the company at its location on the edge of Canton’s central business district.

Robert spends part of the winter in Florida, but is generally eager to head back north and stay involved with operations. “Brian and Scott are so busy here sometimes, I feel like I should be here to help them,” says Robert. Brian and Scott divide management tasks, with Brian more actively involved in the buying and selling of materials.

Scott describes himself as more of a business, accounting and IT manager, including writing software for the company’s use. Both Brian and Scott say that Robert did not put a “hard sell” on them to join the family business, but rather encouraged them to work elsewhere while letting them know that the door was always open. Upon graduating from Ohio State University, Brian and Scott had intriguing offers to work out of state, but chose to join the family business.

S. Slesnick Co. has firmly established itself both directly as a recycler for large generating customers and also as a processor of choice for hauling firms that run their own collection routes but that do not operate recycling facilities. Through this variety of sources and alliances, S. Slesnick Co. has enjoyed growth, with a current employee roster of about 60 people and some 15,000 tons per month of material processed and shipped. 

Field Position
In a city best known as the home of the NFL’s Football Hall of Fame, an apt metaphor to describe S. Slesnick Co.’s location is that it has good field position from which to serve its market. Visitors to the site see the Slesnick name on buildings located on both sides of a busy state route providing easy access to the Interstate highway system.

The company is near the printing press of the local newspaper, the Canton Repository, and centrally located to serve a variety of large-volume industrial generators of old corrugated containers (OCC) and other bulk grades. Highway access allows the company to go beyond Canton and into the markets of northern Ohio’s other major cities, including Akron, Cleveland and Youngstown.

The company’s fleet of 24 trucks and 74 trailers are deployed throughout northeastern Ohio. On a typical day, some 50 vehicles might cross the 70-foot truck scale in Canton. In addition to Slesnick’s own fleet, material brought by haulers from throughout the region is welcomed. “We try to work with anybody,” says Robert. “All haulers are welcome,” he comments, as trucks bearing names such as Metro Disposal and Landmark Disposal tip loads of OCC and other grades of fiber at the Slesnick facility. Brian and Scott estimate that roughly 40 percent of the material has been generated at retail locations, another 40 percent at industrial and warehouse facilities, while some 20 percent of the fiber the company processes is material that has been collected through residential recycling programs, either at drop-off sites or through curbside collection.

As material pours into the facility, the majority of it is eventually baled by the company’s new Harris Gorilla baler, which was installed this summer. The new baler replaces a 12-year-old Harris Gorilla baler that could no longer keep up with the incoming material. The company’s original two-ram baler, a Harris HRBIE, was retired in 1996, but is used as emergency backup at S. Slesnick Co.’s old facility. It had been the focal point of S. Slesnick Co.’s operations since 1976. By the time it was retired it was making some 90 to 110 bales of fiber on the average day, Brian says.

The Gorilla is now the focus of operations in Canton, where 40 people work in several buildings that have been purchased one by one by the company as the properties have become available. “We started here and just kind of grew around this spot," says Robert. "Twelve years ago, I thought we had all the room we could use." But subsequently, the company has added a 100-year-old former railroad warehouse that has provided additional storage space, and it recently purchased another old railroad building for future growth in central Canton. Beyond its major activity of recycling paper in Canton, S. Slesnick Co. also has diversified by recycling plastic and with the acquisition of a recycling facility in Alliance, Ohio, about 20 miles from Canton.

Winning Game Plan
The company’s Alliance Recycling Center, acquired in 1972, handles not only fiber grades but also plastic bottles, aluminum used beverage containers (UBC’s) and steel food cans. Residential material from a three-county solid waste district is among the material entering the 35,000-square-foot Alliance facility, which sits on 5 acres of land. This facility employs 30 people and has a three-year-old Harris Gorilla baler.

About 15 years ago, S. Slesnick Co. began experimenting with a beverage destruction service for bottling plants. The service grew, and the operations were moved to the Alliance facility. The beverage destruction business has grown dramatically. The company now processes between 35 and 70 trailer loads of obsolete beverages per month in a custom-designed part of the plant. S. Slesnick Co. Account Manager Sandy Sayre identified plastics recycling as an area of opportunity for the company and soon began pursuing forms of scrap beyond post-consumer bottles.

Additionally, the metropolitan area that includes Canton and the nearby city of Akron is an historically strong center for the polymers and plastics industries, lending itself to additional industrial and commercial plastic recycling opportunities and the chance to service domestic consuming markets. The timing for S. Slesnick Co. to ramp up its plastics recycling infrastructure has thus far been on the mark. “The fact that oil has risen so dramatically, and most plastics are oil-based, means that all of a sudden recycling plastic that wasn’t worth recycling 10 years ago has now become a very viable market,” says Robert.

Robert also credits his son Brian for helping champion the company’s expansion into plastic. “Brian has really developed this; he has become involved in working with people who come to us with plastic scrap and he usually finds a market for the material.” The company stores much of its plastic in the large 100-year-old warehouse behind its 13-year-old building and processes it in a nearby building that it owns. “Plastics is part of the reason we’re physically larger,” notes Robert.

Additionally, a state of Ohio grant has helped the company fund the purchase of machinery and building expansion costs that will enable the company to process polystyrene for recycling. Paper remains a core focus for the company as well. The surrounding landscape of retailers and factories changes drastically each decade, so knowing the market and serving it well are critical to S. Slesnick’s success. “Companies come and go, we lose old companies, and new ones pop up,” says Robert.  “The constant has always been that you treat every customer with as much respect as you possibly can. Every customer, to me, is important. Whether it’s the largest nationwide hauler or someone pulling up in a car, know them by name.” The Slesnick approach has helped the company grow over several decades.

“When I started, if we did 400 tons per month, that was huge,” recalls Robert. “Now we’re doing 15,000 tons per month,” he says of production at Canton and Alliance. The company will likely need to break down its walls again soon. “Within the next two years, we will add 15,000 square feet to our facility, which will double our capacity,” Brian says. “When we expand or acquire space, it’s prompted by necessity,” adds Scott. “We’re pushing our limits here right now; we need to expand.”