Exide Technologies (re: Battery recycling) has filed for bankruptcy

Today I received legal notice that Exide Technologies is filing under Chapter 11. A meeting of creditors is scheduled for 2:00 July 16th. Attendance at this meeting is not required to pursue a claim.

hmm trying to shed some debt ????

That's what happens up here. People move to rural Maine to "get away from it all". Then they want street lights, sidewalks, sewers, paved roads, police etc. In short, they want to duplicate where they came from.

Originally Posted by Jonniebrass

Exactly then they complain about barking dogs and roosters crowing.

And the smell from cattle lots that were here long before they moved in and built houses next door. Sometimes common sense isn't common.

Originally Posted by sawmilleng

I've heard that there are only a couple of battery manufacturers in North America. (most of the brand names are just sticker slaps to the same battery....) So this could mean we end up buying more crap from China?

Could someone who knows more about battery manufacturing in N.A. fill us in on what this bankruptcy means to the battery market and to us scrappers?

Jon.

That's true bout the number of mfg. But each battery is made to that particular mfg's specs. Less plates or smaller plates, I got a buddy who works for Exide and that's what he told me.

Exide jumped to nasdaq a couple days ago. the whole thing started snowballing when they lost the Walmart account a couple years ago to Johnson Controls. one of the last nails in the coffin was placed there with the Frisco recycling center fiasco (as mentioned by Telecom guy above) and then problems in a California facility, gave them $71 million in non-recurring expenses. Those nails were pounded home by a flurry of class action lawsuits by stockholders. Being a former stockholder, I get the mailings. Funny thing is, I made money on XIDE, so I just toss them out. A lot of day traders made money on XIDE, it regularly moved up & down 15 cents a day as it rollercoastered along in the $3.00 range from 2011-2012.

Right now it's resumed trading as XIDEQ and it's a 14 cent stock, bankrupt on 2.9 Billion in sales, down $100 million from a year ago. Other domestic battery makers, even small ones, are making money. But I don't see anyone with enough capacity to pick up even the domestic sales volume Exide has, so I don't think Exide is going away. It's a troubled company, for sure, but I really think this is a much different bankruptcy than the recent Kodak thing.

What it means to scrappers, I don't have a clue. Other than, if you have some cash you can afford to lose, XIDEQ might be worth taking a chance on.

That's what I thought too, so I'm betting 100$ that pony wont come in last !

Originally Posted by MattInTheHat

Common sense is a curse, not a blessing. If you have it, you must deal with the people who don't.

That is classic right there!

Originally Posted by Bear

does any of this mean the scrap price for batteries is going to drop ?

Probably not. But if Exide owes you money for scrap batteries, if you're lucky you'll eventually get pennies on the dollar.

Many of the lobbyists in Washington, that seem to be fighting for more green products and manufacturing techniques are being funded by Chinese corporations. What is so wrong about this is that the same corporations who are funding these lobbyists here in the USA are most of the time not using environmental friendly practices in China.

The other problem is that to re-tool to be able to keep up with the latest and greatest manufacturing techniques usually takes a substantial investment. And if you have to incur the costs of EPA clean up, even more. When you are starting a new business it's easy to comply with the new standards, if you already exist, it's far more difficult and unlikely.

This is what has happened to our metal plating industry here in the United States. Most of that type of work has gone overseas because it has become almost impossible to comply with the EPA requirements not to mention State requirements in order to conduct business.

The other little known fact about the EPA, is once a fund is created, the EPA is funded, and if you are a sizable company with a large cleanup, this means a huge giant super fund. Once a government program is funded, specially when we are talking about 10s of millions of dollars, the EPA doesn't want to ever complete the cleanup, because that means the end of their fund. Money = power. So I would imagine once the cleanup turned into a EPA fund, the EPA was never going to allow the company to ever finish cleaning things up, which put them in a state they were not able to continue conducting business.

If anyone knows about Iron Mountain Mine here in California, you will see my meaning. Back in the 60s, Iron Mountain Mine was shut down because of the environmental impact it was causing. What The short of the story goes something like this.

Iron Mountain Mine was one of the largest copper mines in the United States. Problem was, that once the mountain was cracked open and exposed, a certain type of bacteria started producing acids, what it does is eat the sulfur, and creates sulfuric acid which in turn dissolves the sulfur metals, or solid metals which pollute the water.

It was put under EPA control in something like 1983, and is now the largest EPA superfund in the US. I was working with a few chemists that had designed a method to extract the metals out of the water, we were working on a bid in an attempt to get the cleanup, which would be funded by the EPA superfund. While cleaning up the water, we would also be able to extract the metals, it was a win/win situation.

We were not even considered, instead BEAR, that's right the same company that makes aspirin, was able to get the contract instead. And they are not cleaning up anything. What they do instead is simply **** up the water coming out of the mountain during the summer, when water flow is low, and then during the winter, release it into the rivers and streams. The problem is that it enters into the Sacramento river along with several other important rivers that provide water to farms in the valley.

You can google this information to read about the full story. Iron Mountain Mines will never be cleaned up, and people who owned the property ended up loosing everything, and have since went into bankruptcy. The property will eventually end up under government control, and the super fund will continue to benefit a company that has a track record of donating to specific politicians campaign funds.

If you really want to understand why businesses are going out of business in this country, all you have to do is follow the money.

Scott

[QUOTE=NobleMetalWorks;157322.... all you have to do is follow the money. Scott[/QUOTE]

That's the first thing I do with any issue ... particularly if politics is involved. Like a business commentator on Fox Business says "Even when they say it isn't, it's ALWAYS about the money".