WastAway to team up with local supplier
WastAway Services, a division of Bouldin Corp., has begun what the company says will be a long-term partnership with local manufacturers by contracting with Tennessee Metal Fabricating to build one of the components of their innovative waste disposal process based here in Warren County.
According to WastAway officials around 80 percent of the machinery for future WastAway sites will be fabricated right here in Warren County, giving a much needed boost to the local economy, which has had its share of factory closings and lost jobs in the last few years.
“The gist of this is WastAway is using a local supplier, Tennessee Metal,” said director of industrial development Denny Woodsmall. “And this is the first of many,” he added.
Tennessee Metal Fabricating, based in the Campaign community, is owned and operated by brothers Donnie and Bobby Taylor. The company is one of the few companies in the region capable of constructing a piece of machinery of this size and specifications.
Donnie Taylor said Tennessee Metal is pleased to become a part of the WastAway team and is impressed with the process.
“We’re really enthused,” Taylor said. “I appreciate the opportunity to get to do this. I think this could be a great thing for the county.”
The 25-foot-long cylindrical carbon and stainless steel unit, called a certified pressure vessel, has a diameter of 30 inches and weighs around 7,000 pounds and performs one of the most important functions of the WastAway process.
“This is like a pressure cooker,” said vice president of sales Wade Sparkman. “It’s a processing unit that does the actual sterilizing of the garbage.”
This is the first unit designed and built from scratch for the company, according to Sparkman.
“We have some that we bought and modified from an outside source, but now we want to have them made locally by one of the local industries here in Warren County,” he said.
The unit was designed from the ground up by Tom Cantrell, vice president of research and development for WastAway, thereby avoiding any modifications and allowing the machinery to be tailored specifically for the WastAway process.
“This one came in made just like we want it,” Cantrell said. “They’ve done a super job on this.”
Taylor said the unit took about 40 hours to manufacture and had some pretty stiff specifications.
“It’s designed to be 360 degrees at 160 psi pressure at all times,” he said.
The unit is basically a shell that will be fitted with proprietary machinery designed by WastAway. Once completed, it will weigh in at more than 17,000 pounds.
The benefits of this partnership will become even more evident as WastAway continues to grow and begins installing and operating facilities in other areas. Plans are to have two more facilities in place by the end of this year, with a half dozen more next year, and projected sales of as many as one per month once the process catches on.
And since each facility could contain from one to ten of these units the effect on Tennessee Metal’s production could be substantial, as well as the effect on the local economy.
“We want to keep as much work inside Warren County as we can,” Sparkman said. “This is our showplace. This is where we show representatives of every city, every county, every state, and other countries, the system and how it operates.”
Woodsmall agreed.
“No matter where we set the facilities up, in any county or any state, it’s going to come from Warren County,” he said.