Since aluminum prices tanked it's lower on our priority list and we've reconfigured our chopper setups for wire instead. Our particular ACR shredding setup required one person to chop off the ends with the soldering (so we could sell the flake close to a number one cu price - without removing the soldered end it'll only be #2 pricing you'll get), one person to feed and at least three people to pick out the aluminum and number 2 cu off the conveyer out the vibrating table. That was the minimal labor input (not counting buying, selling, loading and unloading trucks etc). Doing that when we could sell the Al flake at $.70/+ made a lot more sense than now when it is as low as half that. So the profitability has varied dramatically with the price of aluminum even more than copper. Running a regular 8hr shift we can produce a ftl of Cu flake (43000+ pounds) every week with some ease.
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