By CASEY NEILL
TYRONE Landsman ran Future Metals Recycling from his car when the business first moved into Melbourne in 2008.
The company’s managing director was working at a Hallam recycling facility when Tom Garrett and Stuart Miller bought Shepparton’s Fletcher Metals Recycling in 2005 and rebranded as Future.
“Tom and I became good mates. I said ‘if you ever come to Melbourne I want to join you’,” Mr Landsman said.
“So we started from scratch in Melbourne in 2008. At the start, I was basically working out of my car.
“It was good fun.”
In November 2008, they bought National Metals in Hallam, which they’ve retained to enable easy access for small or one-off customers.
“So basically we doubled our business overnight,” Mr Landsman said.
They set up headquarters in Ordish Road, Dandenong South, and now employ 47 people across the three sites.
Future collects metal to sell to local smelters or export.
“Recently, we’ve diversified a bit and we’re doing some transport operations,” Mr Landsman said.
“We’re doing some work with Visy recycling, where we’re doing their transport work for them.
“We do the City of Whitehorse and the City of Moorabool.
“So we collect the recycling bins and take them directly to Visy.
“We also do some commercial work for them as well, where they’ve got the likes of Coles and some of the shopping centres with large cardboard collections.”
Future is now building its presence in the utilities sector.
“We’ve also brought on a specialist in that area,” Mr Landsman said.
“We do the demolishing of the old transformers from power stations as well, but we’ve got an electrical engineer on board to manage that.”
They’ve had to diversify to survive, Mr Landsman said.
“Around this region, there are over 50 scrap yards. People open them on a regular basis,” he said.
“They can open up a shed, they don’t really need a permit as such, and away they go.
“They start buying scrap and they export it.”
But more than diversifying has kept Future going strong.
“One thing that we really set ourselves on is that we have correct weight,” Mr Landsman said.
“What we collect on is what we pay on.
“Where the others might pay – say they pay a lot more, then they’ll do some adjustments.
“The industry needs to be cleaned up, and I know the EPA, the police, and WorkCover are doing a blitz on a lot of facilities at the moment, which is the best thing that could happen.
“We need a level playing field.”
Future Metals is a second-tier recycler to the likes of Norstar, OneSteel and Sims.
“We’re the level below the majors, and that’s where we want to be,” Mr Landsman said.
“I don’t want to lose focus on our customers and I think they have. I think we have that edge over the majors.
“Then the edge that we have over the minors is that we offer that professionalism that clients want from a major.”
Future was a finalist for the CSR and Employment and Small Business categories at this year’s Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce Premier Regional Business Awards.
Mr Landsman is determined to stay at the top.
“We are looking at more council contracts, delivering them in our own right,” he said.
“We’re making sure we don’t have our eggs in one basket.”
