Montgomery's high-tech recycling center shuts down

Montgomery’s new, high-tech recycling center has shut down while the leaders of the business meet with investors and others to work out a new deal. The city’s trash trucks are now bypassing the center and going straight to the landfill.

“I’m anticipating it to be a temporary suspension,” Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said about the private business.

The Infinitus Renewable Energy Park opened last year to separate and convert the city’s trash into commodities like paper and glass. The company then resold those products and pocketed the profits. It started taking trash in May 2014, and it was diverting more than half of the waste from the landfill at the time it closed.

Employees were told about the shutdown Friday, and Strange said he was told at about the same time. The plant employs about 100 people.

Strange said the company’s pricing structure became a problem because of massive changes to the commodities market.

“Their whole business model is made on a 10-year average, historic lows,” he said. “They didn’t want to continue to incur costs, given the pricing.”

Company officials and city leaders plan to meet with new investors on Oct. 22, and Strange said he’s hopeful the plant will reopen after that. “There’s a lot of (investor) interest,” he said.

The company said Monday in a statement that it plans to “review a detailed plan that would allow us to resume operations.”

“One key element of a successful materials recycling program is the ability to sell recovered material at a price that will support the recycling process,” said Kyle Mowitz, Infinitus CEO. “While our customers have been satisfied with the material we have reclaimed unfortunately the market price for these materials have dropped dramatically.”

The company said it appreciates the public’s understanding and would provide more updates as it works in “a cooperative effort on all fronts” to re-open the plant.

The IREP center separated out recyclables, meaning city residents could throw everything into the same green bin.

Montgomery Clean City Commission Director Susan Carmichael found out about the closure Monday morning and said there isn’t a long-term alternative in place. The city was providing collection bins for recyclables, but those bins were then taken to IREP.

For now, she said people can take recyclable materials to McInnis Recycling Center at 4341 Norman Bridge Road or Mount Scrap Material at 824 N. Decatur St.

The plant won the Outstanding Public-Private Partnership for Innovation last month from the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama.

"Not only are we diverting that (waste), these are going back into market," IREP owner, representative and Operations Manager Daniel Carlisle said of recycled commodities at the time. "For the first time in Montgomery, there's a lot of products that are shipped right here going back into manufacturing."

If IREP isn’t able to re-open the center, Strange said the city would eventually gain ownership of the $35 million facility. He said they’re hoping to avoid that.