The Louis Padnos Iron & Metal Company can best be described as a giant recycling facility. Louis Padnos can supply any of its recycled materials in any form that the customer desires. As well as supplying anything, Louis Padnos will collect any unwanted products that one desires to discard of.

Louis Padnos recycles all types of metal scrap whether it be ferrous or nonferrous. The process they use to recycle metal and cast iron shavings is called briquetting. The raw shavings are feed into the system, they get crushed and melted down, and are finally formed into briquettes which are in turn sold to foundaries. Louis Padnos is only one of three companies in the United States which manufactures scrap using briquetting. Louis Padnos recycles much of the aluminum which they receive by melting it down and casting large ingots. Louis Padnos also serves as a broker for some product, which they may purchase and resell to another scrap yard.

One very interesting and unique feature of Louis Padnos is that they have their own machine shop. Here they build much of the equipment that is used to recycle, as well as their own truck beds and boxes. Welding appeared to be the primary operation which the machine shop performed. However, they also did milling, drilling, turning, cutting, and even painting. I was fascinated to see the on-site capabilities which they had, and quickly understood how these capabilities would be both helpful and cost saving.

Throughout the tour it became clear that Louis Padnos was very conscience of the environmental effects of the scrap they dealt with, as well as the quality of their products. Ford Motor Company has recognized Louis Padnos as a Q-1 supplier. This means that Louis Padnos has proven quality systems in place, and they must continually measure and report the quality of their products. Lastly, Louis Padnos has their very own waste water treatment facility. This enables them to collect all the runoff water from their facility through a drainage system, and treat the possibly contaminated water before it can adversely effect the environment. Although they were willing to admit they were not perfect, it was clear that they continually strive to become more environmentally clean.