COVER STORY
27recyclinginternational.com | September/October | 2020
Karle recycling of Stuttgart in southwest Germany has seen
its business shrink by 20% during the coronavirus crisis. But
company partner and ceo Stephan Karle says it’s no time to
cry: ‘there’s work to be done.’
Running a scrap business means tak-
ing up challenges, in both bad times
and good, proclaims Stephan Karle.
The ceo of Karle Recycling puts his
money where his mouth is because, at
the peak of pandemic, he opened two
new sites. One is a small yard in
Böblingen, south of Stuttgart. The
other, ‘our newest baby’, is the re-
opened Recyclingpark Neckartal. This
facility is located just outside Stuttgart
and concentrates on the collection
and processing of paper, plastics as
well as stone (street) construction
waste.
‘As an entrepreneur, when I see a
chance to add value and make the
company stronger, I grab it,’ says
Karle. ‘Not only to grow the business
but also to diversify it and spread the
risk. When you focus 100% on one
thing, you take 100% risk.’
THE LESS SHIPPING THE BETTER
Diversification is what you see when
you enter Karle Recycling’s headquar-
ters and main yard in the north of
Stuttgart where trucks fully loaded
with scrap regularly come and go.
The site is divided into two parts:
one area is for metals, the other
mainly comprises paper, plastics and
wood.
On a yearly basis, the company pro-
cesses some 400 000 tonnes of scrap,
including the metals. On average, half
of the ferrous and non-ferrous scrap is
exported to smelters in Luxemburg
and Italy while the rest remains in
Germany. ‘I am an advocate of han-
dling scrap as nearby as possible,’
says Karle. ‘Why ship high quality stuff
across oceans to far away places when
you can sell locally at almost the same
price and sometimes even a better
price?’
AUTOMOTIVE HEADACHES
In Stuttgart, Karle Recycling is in good
company. Germany’s sixth largest city
is home to major industries including
Bosch, Thyssen-Krupp, Porsche, and
Mercedes-Benz. ‘These big names are
literally all around us here and they
Fotobijschrift
KADERKOP
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‘SCRAP’ SOUVENIR Of A DARK TIME
There’s an interesting story behind Recyclingpark Neckartal, the subsidiary
company in which Karle Recycling has a 50% share. The yard is located at a
former limestone quarry in the lush countryside outside Stuttgart. The site is
home to 14 pillars made from travertine mined at the quarry. In 1936 the
Nazis commissioned the pillars as part of a monument at the former Adolf
Hitler Square in Berlin to honour Italy’s dictator Mussolini.
The pillars were never shipped to the German capital and, after the war,
they were forgotten about, hidden behind an incineration plant. Eventually,
they received preservation status and cannot be removed. ‘It’s part of our
history and it seems these pillars will have to stay there forever,’ says
Stephan Karle.
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