Universal Recycling Technologies (URT) has closed its Dover, New Hampshire facility and is consolidating work into its other plants, a decision company leaders described as a strategic refocus rather than a retreat from the region.
The shift took effect Sept. 1 for purposes of transferring business and finalizing logistics, and the company said it would stop accepting material at the site by Oct. 1 after phasing down intake in recent weeks, URT President Ken Thomas told E-Scrap News.
Thomas said the Dover operation handled cathode ray tube (CRT) processing in the past and did manual disassembly, but shipping most material back to the Midwest made the business model difficult to sustain. “We shipped material back to the Midwest, and that was not sustainable,” he said. “CRT work is a high-risk endeavor with shrinking volumes, and once we centralized that in Wisconsin, Dover no longer fit.”
URT will route customer material to Wisconsin when that makes sense and has introduced other customers to regional providers in New England. Thomas said the change is not tied to a broader decline in electronics recycling or to federal policy shifts. “For everything that hurts us, there is something else that helps us,” he said. “This was done independent of that.”
About a dozen employees were affected. Thomas said staff had been told several years ago that a closure was possible, then the company extended the building lease by a year while it evaluated opportunities that did not materialize. Some employees were offered transfers to Wisconsin or Texas. “Moving from New Hampshire to Wisconsin is a culture shock,” he said, noting a handful of workers will remain to finish cleanup at the site through the end of the year.
Thomas said URT expects no negative impact on its overall operations since New Hampshire was a small market for the company. “It is about being able to take URT resources and focus on areas showing significant growth,” he said. Customers that value certifications and transparent downstream management have been willing to accept higher freight costs tied to consolidation, he added.
In addition to Janesville, Wisconsin, URT has locations in Texas and Oregon.
URT is among the limited number of US firms that continue to process CRT devices and it underwent a 30-day e-Stewards suspension in March following OSHA citations, after which certification status was restored. Earlier this year, processor Kuusakoski exited the US market, a move that underscores the challenges facing domestic CRT processing capacity.
URT has not issued a public announcement about the Dover closure. As of this week, the New Hampshire facility page indicated the residential drop-off program was suspended, which aligns with the company’s description of the phased wind-down.
