bcbusiness.ca February 2015 BCBusiness 65
extremely competitive. ABC bids to salvage metal from end-
of-life pulp mills, farms and bridges. On the day we are in the
yard, there are decommissioned tanks, an entire airplane,
tens of thousands of spent brass bullet casings, cars, railcars
and copper wire of every conceivable size and thickness.
In an average month, nearly 20,000 tonnes of metal
will move through this yard, and all of the heavy lifting
is performed by machinery: three material handlers, four
excavation vehicles and a fleet of "skid-steer" loaders
zip around the property in an atmosphere of controlled
chaos. Depending on the task, the excavators are fitted
with giant magnets, grasping metal claws or "jaws of life"
shear attachments, the latter capable of slicing up railcars
like scissors through paper. There are also immense, Tim
Burtonesque cutting and compressing machines: a "guil-
lotine" that chops metal into smaller pieces and a non-
ferrous compressor that works much the way a farm baler
packages hay, except the sound effects are much scarier.
The yard is divided into two equal halves: one for non-
ferrous metals, including copper and aluminum sold by
the pound; the other is for ferrous metals, mostly bulkier
iron and steel sold by the tonne. (Ferrous and non-ferrous
metals are like apples and oranges: completely different
commodities with different markets for sale, necessitating
strict separation.) The weight and size of the ferrous scrap
necessitated the construction of a spur-line connecting the
yard to the main CN rail track nearby (
ABC owns 100 of
their own railcars). While most non-ferrous metal will end
up in Asia via a container ship, the ferrous stuff will be
melted down in North America.
Copper is the high-value metal, and Lorenzo leads us to
