I want to expand, approaching a bank for a loan.

From what it sounds like you are dream for people with granulating operations already but perhaps farther away from your not so profitable local yards. I'm not sure what your shipping and storage space is like but I think you would benefit from getting a larger work space and become a "feeder" yard first. You will see a faster ROI on a small yard with a baler, low overhead/payroll versus an expensive granulator setup. The machines are only good as the user and require a few years experience to master.Plus the salesman is always going to tell you how easy it is to use because they want to make the sale. Because you have such uniform material you can fetch a much higher price shipping it out. Then recoup your invest and look into the granulator if you truly outgrow from there. Small recycling operations seem to be the route to go, a lot of the big boys had to cutback the scale of their operations because of lack of supply and high overhead. You're assuming less risk by not relying on recovery.

Army,

1st time I've read this post. Have you considered dealing with a broker instead of a scrap yard. Not sure if you have room to accumulate 40,000 pounds. There was an interesting article about Johnson Zeng and Sunrise Metal Recycling Ltd.. I'm including the link to the article and there website.

To a Chinese Scrap-Metal Hunter, America's Trash Is Treasure - Businessweek
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