LYNNHAVEN, Mass.-Several factors-including a fire, reorganization of some facilities and higher insurance and raw materials costs-caused tire recycler GreenMan Technologies Inc. to take losses in its fourth quarter and full fiscal year ended Sept. 30, according to the company.
Financial results released Jan. 5 showed that Lynnhaven-based GreenMan lost nearly $2.9 million on sales of $29.7 million for the year, and lost $386,000 on sales of $8.4 million for the quarter.
For the year-before quarter, the recycling firm had lost $126,000 on sales of $8.4 million. For fiscal 2002 ended Sept. 30, 2002, it had earned slightly more than $1 million on sales of $27.5 million.
A massive fire in the waste wire processing operations at GreenMan's Jackson, Ga., plant last March 31 shut down operations there, though the company hopes to reopen them by the first anniversary of the blaze.
The company received a total payoff of $1.03 million from its insurance company to repair the Jackson facility.
Among other charges during fiscal 2003, GreenMan recorded a non-cash impairment loss of $261,000 related to the reconfiguration of its Wisconsin branch and the write-down of certain idle assets, the company said.
Also, two of GreenMan's largest tire-derived fuel customers suffered boiler problems, and the cost of shipping tires to Jackson from its LaVergne, Tenn., operations reached as high as $75,000 a month.
The shipping costs stemmed from the failure of GreenMan's lender, thus hampering the company's plans to establish a 4.5-million-tire capacity shredding operation at LaVergne, Chuck Coppa, GreenMan's chief financial officer, said in December.
Although the company did establish shredding operations at La-Vergne utilizing more than 1 million tires annually, the remaining tires must be shipped to Georgia until the remaining capacity can be placed onstream in Tennessee.
Mr. Coppa said Jan. 6 that GreenMan is considering ``about five different options'' for financing at LaVergne and hopes to reach a deal by early February.
The various charges exceeded $3.2 million in fiscal 2003, according to a company press release.
But GreenMan also completed several performance-enhancing projects totaling more than $3 million in fiscal 2003, it added.