One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Sometimes you need a little luck in business and today was one of those extraordinary days when things just fell into place. Most of you that follow my posts know we have a logistics business running a warehouse and have been biding our time waiting for the punch bag and trampoline material to arrive so we can get the next manufacturing phase of the business up and running. The material is due next month and cannot come soon enough.

One of the biggest problems I have been working on is the stuffing material that goes inside the punch bags. Trying to secure 50 tons of waste in off cut material monthly is not that easy. There was one person who has a deal with counterfeit clothing that he shreds on behalf of customs, but he is not cheap and his fees are astronomical considering this is all free.

Lucky Break

This morning we got a phone call from a manufacturing company asking if we would be interested in their waste material. They currently dump it at a cost, but have now considered their social responsibilities. They would sell it to us at a charitable rate which would then help them support other social causes. The fee we would pay for the material would be like a donation and far cheaper than the going rate for scrap off cuts.

They do enough volume to cover the 50 tons monthly meaning we could manufacture more punching bags if required. The big plus is by getting the filling for nearly free the cost of each bag has just dropped considerably which will make this even more profitable. Their factory is automated and runs 24 hours, 7 days a week generating the same waste every day so there is no guesswork and know exactly how much waste they produce daily. A 40ft skip every week is the same as having 4 x 40ft containers of material monthly and more than double our needs.

I would need to employ a few more people whose job would be to fill the bags plus compact the material. We did a trial a few weeks ago with two young lads filling and compacting 50 bags during the course of 1 work day. I would probably need 4 people to cover the numbers required, but this is at least good news knowing we have the material taken care of.

The social responsibility angle helps as we also get free advertising for playing our part in this new scheme. Re purposing items destined for a land fill is good news all round and couldn't be happier because it solves our problem at the same time.

The manufacturing side of this business is highly profitable and even more so now that one of the major costs is basically free. You could not have wished for a better outcome and I suppose you make your own luck by doing the best you can by how you treat people.

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