News
ORLANDO, FLA. (April 13, 12:30 p.m. ET) — Good Works Reprocessing LLC is a new business focused on custom size-reduction services including pulverizing, blending, grinding, metal and contamination removal, repackaging, classifying, fines removal, and certified destruction.
Robert Perrone, left, regional sales manager, and Dan Sheehan, president of Good Works Reprocessing LLC at NPE2012 in Orlando, Fla. (Plastics News photo by Michael Marcotte)
Behind the operation is President Dan Sheehan, who resurrected a family business with a core group of other employees. Good Works operates out of a facility in Easton, Pa., originally designed and built by Nicos Polymers & Grinding Inc. of Nazareth, Pa.
Sheehan is the brother of Tara Knicos, who co-founded Nicos with her husband, Jim, in 1978 and sold it to CrownBrook Capital LLC in 2007.
Sheehan started Good Works with four former Nicos employees: Rene Blanco, Enrique Blanco, Jose Martinez and Pedro Gonzalez. Tara and Jim Knicos support the firm as advisers but are not financially tied to it.
Jim Knicos entered plastics recycling after two years as a Wall Street stockbroker. He and Tara got their start as brokers of plastics scrap by renting two one-car garages from neighbors. They dropped the K from the firm's name to make it easier to find in the phone book. Nicos moved to the 60,000-square-foot Easton site in 1988, and built a $4.5 million plant in Nazareth in 2000.
The Nazareth plant was under a rental agreement by Coll Materials LLC of Zanesville, Ohio, which bought Nicos' assets in early 2011. Fire destroyed the plant in August. The cause was never determined.
Sheehan's goal is to "bring [the business] back to what it was," he said in an April 2 interview at NPE2012, held April 1-5 in Orlando. Nicos in its heyday was very focused on family values, he said.
Sheehan said the ownership group took second mortgages and tapped retirement accounts to start the business. Key people wanted to get back into the business, he said. Good Works now has 30 employees.
