Innovation spurs Resourceful Paper’s growth

GREELEY – No one can tell Galen and Kathy Hill that recycling’s not big business.

The couple has spent 15 years devising ways that recycled paper can usefully re-enter the consumer stream.

They even launched their business, Resourceful Paper Inc. of Greeley, twice, the second time after a devastating fire in 1985 left them with nothing

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but debt and the chance to start from the ground up – again.

Now, Resourceful Paper’s revenues total about $1.5 million annually, up from $800,000 in 1994.

The key to staying on the cutting edge in an extraordinarily volatile industry? Diversity. Resourceful Paper keeps finding new uses for scrap paper.

“There’s a terrific amount of waste in the printing business,” Galen Hill said, while strolling through one of his company’s buildings at 2419 First

Ave.

Rolls of newsprint, from gigantic ones to those with less than one inch of paper remaining, wait their turn to be cut into 24-by-30-inch sheets, stacked

and bound into reams.

Every month, 200 tons of the reams are sent to a Denver moving company, which uses the paper for packing.

“If I were strictly in the newspaper recycling business, we’d probably be broke now,” Hill said.

A year ago, newsprint for recycling would bring $220 per ton; now it’s closer to $40 to $45 a ton.

“The bottom dropped out,” Hill said.

That’s where his brand of entrepreneurship comes in. “He keeps working on new things,” Kathy said with a laugh.

Resourceful Paper also is in the business of animal bedding. Scrap phone books are collected from phone companies for shredding and baling into

packages of bedding, now used primarily for horses.

The concept has found popularity, at least at some area stables.

“The stables are easier to clean, they look nice and when you dispose of the bedding, it goes back into the field and you can’t even tell where they

were dropped,´ said Dick Ayres, owner of Blue Cloud Farms in Boulder County.

Ayres has 35 stalls for horse boarding and riding lessons. He’s been using Resourceful Paper’s product in place of wood shavings for about three

years.

“I couldn’t get shavings in the winter,” he said. “Then the prices got so gawd-awful high.”

The wood shavings were stockpiled during the winter, and there was always attrition when the wind blew. Plus, spent shavings wouldn’t disintegrate

into the soil like the paper bedding.

Ayres gets 250 bales of recycled paper bedding every three weeks. Each stall takes three bales when cleaned. In contrast, it took four bales of wood

shavings.

“There’s no comparison,” he said.

And the product is about to get better.

Resourceful Paper is installing a piece of equipment that will hopefully remove excess dust from the paper bedding. Dust is one of the few problems

associated with the product.

Resourceful Paper also recycles cardboard, baling and shipping it to plants where it will be made into new boxes.

Weyerhaeuser Co., a Washington-based paper-products company and one of the largest recycling companies on the Front Range, buys the cardboard.

“We have done business with Resourceful Paper since our entrance to the Denver market [in 1991], and have just finished installation of a new

horizontal baler and paper-sort system tying them to a 10-year fiber supply agreement,´ said Clare Anderson, operations manager at the Denver site.

“Recently, Weyerhaeuser and Resourceful entered into a long-term processing agreement to service Eastman Kodak Co. in Windsor,” Anderson

added.

Additionally, Resourceful Paper does confidential shredding for Northern Colorado companies, such as State Farm Insurance Cos. The waste is baled

and recycled.

Meanwhile, Hill continues to do his own research and development.

One puzzle is how to reuse stacks of thick cardboard tubes on which the rolls of newsprint arrives. Once the newsprint is recycled, the tubes are

stacked in a corner of the yard while Hill contemplates their future.

One experimental use is to cut the tubes into small pieces the size of masking-tape rolls. The circles are then attached to pallet-sized pieces of cardboard

and used to provide better air circulation for transport of meat products for the Monfort Cos.

Hill fully expects his company to continue expanding. Seven months ago, the firm purchased an additional 4.5 acres. The company currently occupies

33,000 square feet.

Hill had hoped to double revenues again this year but since has cut those expectations.

“I was planning to do so, but not with the market like it is.” he said.

Even so, diversity will continue to help the company ride market cycles.