Industrial Paper Shedders-3 Things To Consider

Industrial paper shredders are designed for huge volumes of applications through a conveyor as opposed to feeding sheets through a slot.  Manual slot feeding is what is normally done in small office shredders.  Sheets of copy or bond paper are fed into a slot several pieces at a time only as compared to industrial paper shredders wherein you can toss large quantities of sheets onto the conveyor, which then feeds the paper into huge hardened steel cutting heads.  Industrial paper shredders reduce the overall cost of shredding when it is done in bulk by a lower cost employee.  An industrial shredder can be cost justified at a bulk of about 500 pounds of shredding on the average per week.   So the higher the shredding volume the more efficient the purchase of an industrial shredder becomes.  An industrial shredder can shred anywhere from 750 to 2,250 pounds of paper an hour. 

As compared to outsourcing the shredding service, by having an in-house industrial paper shredder, you are able to maintain the level of security that you want.  When you outsource shredding, you take into consideration the number of trips/bins to be emptied.  The more bins, the higher the price because normally, shredding services charge by the bin or they may choose to charge by the hour.  Additional charges may be inputted for pick up, fuel surcharges when fuel prices increase or the price the shredding service can get when they sell the shredded paper to recycling companies.  The average cost of the service is about $.25 per pound although rarely does any shredding service quote this way.  For high volume shredding, it could go as low as about $.10 per pound to a high price of about $.40 per pound for lower volumes. 

There are a few items to consider before you decide to purchase an in-house shredding facility.  First consider the hourly rate of the employee designated to do the shredding.  An in-house shredding facility will need a dedicated employee to oversee the operations and process of the shredding facility.  Next, study the purchase price or leasing price, the maintenance cost, the capacity and the life span of the shredder.  Lastly, consider the overhead costs that will include the emptying of the bins, shredder oil, shredder bags and maintenance.  All these factors should be carefully taken into consideration before deciding on the actual purchase.

Once a cost benefit analysis has been done with the above factors in mind and it proves that having an in-house shredder is more cost efficient than outsourcing it, then you will need to put an in-house shredding plan together before you make the actual purchase.  Check on your facility’s available space.  You will most probably need a footprint space of about 3-4 feet all around and a storage space enough to fit a week’s worth of shredding material or an estimated 2,000 pounds on one pallet.  Then you will also need space for the bagged shredded materials that would occupy about twice the space of the unshredded materials that you provided.  Look into the power availability of your facility as well.  A 220 V, 3 phase, 30 or 50 amp and 60 cycle power should be provided for the industrial paper shredder.  Get ready with the boxes and bins together with wheeled carts to be able to transport eh material from the bins to the shredder.  It is important that the bins and boxes can be efficiently moved for disposal.

An industrial paper shredder such as the Formax FD 8802 Cross Cut shredder costs about $11,008.  The Intimus 802CC Industrial Shredder on the other hand has an advertised price of $21,275.