UPDATED 2/6/15, 2:30 CST
By Chase Castle
chase@corridorbusiness.com
Locally owned City Carton Recycling in Iowa City has been sold to Republic Services, one of the largest waste management companies in the United States.
City Carton Recycling was officially acquired by the Phoenix-based company on Jan. 16, according to a spokesperson for Republic.
Representatives from both companies declined comment on any possible restructuring of City Carton, which also owns a document destruction subsidiary, or detail how the deal may affect customers, including the city of Iowa City.
“City Carton Recycling has been serving the surrounding community since 1967, and has become the leading recycler in Eastern Iowa,” Republic Services spokesperson Russ Knocke said in an email. “Customers can expect the same services and commitment to an effortless customer experience.”
Mr. Knocke did not say whether Republic Services plans to lay off employees or restructure its workforce at the Iowa sites, but stated that the company “continue[s] to employ 120 people at seven facilities in Eastern Iowa.”
Originally founded as City Carton Company, the business was established in 1967 by husband and wife Mort and Marcy Ockenfels, along with a second company, Ockenfels Transfer. Both businesses were created to service Procter & Gamble in Iowa City by recycling the company’s extra cardboard boxes and transporting materials.
Over the next four decades, City Carton expanded with recycling facilities in Cedar Falls, Mt. Pleasant, Cedar Rapids, Muscatine, Davenport, Creston and Altoona. According to the Creston News Advertiser, the facility in Creston was taken over by Prairie Solid Waste in 2013.
In 1992, Mort and Marcy Ockenfels sold City Carton Recycling to their children, brothers John, Andy, Mark, Tim and Chris Ockenfels, and their sisters Donna and Cindy.
Both Andy and John Ockenfels have served in various executive roles in the company. Andy Ockenfels assumed the role of CEO around the start of 2011, shortly after John Ockenfels retired from the company in 2010.
In an interview with the Corridor Business Journal in 2011, Andy Ockenfels said the company had no plans to relocate from its original location on Benton Street, but said he had discussed that possibility with city representatives.
“It may happen sometime, but this location fits us,” Mr. Ockenfels said. “It’s been designed around us since 1967 and it would be very hard. There’s nowhere else within the radius of downtown to put 11.5 acres of recycling.”
Andy Ockenfels said the location was convenient in part because of its proximity to the company’s two largest clients at that time—the University of Iowa and the City of Iowa City. He did acknowledge, however, that the site falls within the city’s Riverfront Crossings District, which calls for about 26 acres of park space and another 25 acres of building development.
“There’s not been any mention of how [the city] would pay for the nice green areas, bike trails and things,” Andy Ockenfels said in 2011 of the Riverfront Crossings plan. “And until that happens, that there’s a funding mechanism for it, our plans at City Carton are to continue to do business here as usual.”
City Carton Recycling in 2012 hired Bill Lundberg as president, the first non-family member to fill that role. According to Mr. Lundberg’s LinkedIn profile, his last month with the company was December 2014. Mr. Lundberg states on his profile that he was recruited for the position in order to “turn around [a] family-owned, family-run business engaged in recycling municipal, commercial and industrial waste.”
As of at least April 2014, Andy Ockenfels continued to serve as CEO. Andy Ockenfels did not respond to inquiries related to the sale or his role with the new company, although Mr. Knocke stated in an email that, “The Ockenfels family continues to be an important part of our services and operations in Eastern Iowa, and we are excited about the opportunity to work with them.”
According to the trade publication Recycling Today, City Carton Recycling is one of the 20 largest paper recyclers in the U.S. In addition to the company’s recycling facilities, City Carton owns Document Destruction and Recycling Services (DDRS), which has facilities in Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Altoona.
