MTB Recycling plays a double role in the wire-chopping world it’s both a leading processor within Europe and a worldwide manufacturer and supplier of equipment.

Sited near Lyon, in the culinary heart of France, a company named MTB Recycling has grown and prospered by following the old rule against putting all your eggs in one basket. More precisely, MTB (the initials stand for Machines de Triages et de Broyages) follows an eggs-in-both-baskets approach to business. The company is both a major cable and wire processor and a leading machinery manufacturer, producing “prechopper” shredders, granulators, separators, and other equipment for customers all around the world.

On the machinery side in particular, MTB’s recent growth has been nothing short of extraordinary: The company estimates that, over the past five years, more than 50 percent of wire-chopping production in the United States has switched to MTB shredders.

Like many business success stories, this one began with a couple of entrepreneurs who hoped they had a better idea. In the 1970s, Francis Sevilla and Guy Sosson two mechanical engineers developed a slow-speed rotary shredder system that within half a year was processing 600 mt of cable a month.

In the 1980s, Sevilla and Sosson formed MTB, from the beginning, MTB strove to be both a processor and machinery manufacturer and to benefit from this dual role.
So as MTB simultaneously processed wire and developed wire-processing equipment, it could design and redesign the machinery to meet its needs as a user. This is one of the main ingredients of the company’s success. In operating their own plants, they have a good understanding of the problems of the industry and what solutions are required. The equipment designs were refined to a point where they not only competed with but also out-performed the norms of the industry.

As an equipment maker as well as a processor, MTB constantly revises and improves its machinery to meet its changing needs. Likewise, before MTB offers a new machine to customers, it first tests the prototypes on its own processing lines, sometimes for a year or more before putting the new unit on the market.

They have an entire processing plant that serves as their test center, unlike other suppliers, which may run tests on small lab units with results ‘scaled-up,’ tests at MTB are performed on a full-production basis. They and their customers, want to know real-world results.

Asked to define MTB’s business philosophy, Francis Sevilla lists four guiding principles: integrity, quality, simplicity, and teamwork. The first three relate mostly to the company’s products, while the fourth - teamwork - is a hallmark of how the company interacts with its customers, suppliers, and employees