From equipment supplier to profitability partner

Alexander Zinn, Director global sales and marketing at Lindemann Metal Recycling, crunches the numbers on how the company is using technology and data to redefine customer success in metal recycling.

In an industry where margins are tight, energy costs are rising and global competition is fierce, metal recyclers are under more pressure than ever to improve efficiency and profitability. For Lindemann Metal Recycling, this challenge presents a clear opportunity — not just to sell machines, but to help customers unlock lasting value from them.

At Lindemann, we are transforming the basis of our commercial strategy. Today we are an equipment supplier, but we want to become a performance partner to our customers — focusing on reducing their real operational costs, especially cost-per-ton.”

That shift may sound subtle, but in practice it represents a profound change in how Lindemann works with customers. Instead of selling a machine and walking away, the company is committing to a long-term, data-driven partnership that helps customers squeeze more value out of every ton of scrap they process.

Understanding (and reducing) cost-per-ton
The key to this new approach is understanding the customer’s cost-per-ton – a complex figure that accounts for energy, labour, downtime, maintenance and throughput.

Not every customer knows their exact cost-per-ton. So, we’ve developed a comprehensive tool that helps map all the relevant factors. That gives us a baseline from which to build a business case for improvements.

Once we’ve established the current cost-per-ton, we can advise on the most cost-effective upgrades that can slash that figure and thereby boost customer profitability. That could mean adding a pre-shredder to reduce wear and tear in the main shredder. Or fitting a frequency inverter to cut energy consumption by up to 20%. Or installing Lindemann’s Shredder Drive Assistant, which can increase throughput by a similar margin.

All of this helps lower cost-per-ton. And it’s all based on hard facts. Thanks to our advanced sensors and myLindemann technology platform, we can capture and interrogate performance data in real time — so we can prove the savings and identify further optimisation opportunities.

Partnership is the way forward
This performance-led philosophy is also changing our business model. At Lindemann we are developing a subscription-based service, one that bundles wear parts, maintenance, analytics and technology upgrades into a single monthly fee. The aim is to provide peace of mind and predictable costs for customers, while at the same time ensuring machines always operate at peak efficiency.

This new approach requires a much closer relationship with customers. We sit down regularly with our customers, study the data together and build strategies to help them improve. We don’t charge for this consultancy, as we should both benefit. The customer becomes more competitive and we build a stronger, longer-term relationship.

The benefits of this approach extend beyond cost reduction. Improved shredder performance can lead to purer, denser scrap output — fetching higher prices in the market. In some cases, the right investment might even increase cost-per-ton slightly — but still result in better overall profitability, thanks to higher-value output.

It’s about understanding the delta between processing costs and selling price. We want to help our customers widen that gap in their favour, whichever route we take.

Culture shift meets opportunity
While the benefits are clear in theory, the shift to performance partnerships requires a mindset change for them to be accepted in reality — particularly in a traditionally conservative industry like metal recycling.

Investing in order to save isn’t always an easy sell, but the numbers speak for themselves. Between energy savings and productivity gains, we’re talking about potential double-digit improvements to profitability.

For us at Lindemann, the performance partner approach applies equally to new and existing customers — and to shears and balers as well as shredders. In every case, the strategy is the same: use data, insight and technical expertise to help customers get more from less.

Our target is simple: We want to make our customers more profitable. That’s what being a performance partner means — and that’s where we believe the future of this industry lies.