Profiles in Textile and Carpet Recycling, Summer 2004

Peerless Materials Company

by Maggie Coulter

Located in a 35,000-square-foot warehouse in Los Angeles’s industrial district, Peerless Materials Company has been in business for 27 years making and selling industrial wiping products from pre- and postconsumer cloth. Peter Pritchard, who bought the company with Lou Buty in 2002, explained they have diversified in the last two years. That has included the production and sales of nonwoven (or paper) wipers, absorbents for containing oil spilled on water, and stormwater control products to keep oil and sediments from running into rivers and the ocean. However, 80 percent of Peerless’ business is still wiping products that are sold to industrial companies. About half of their customers use the wipers themselves and about half resell them to their customers.

About 85 percent of Peerless’ wipers are made from postconsumer material and about 15 percent are preconsumer. About half of the postconsumer feedstock is clothing purchased from local graders, including one that subleases part of their facility. The other half comes from area laundries that sell Peerless their old linens, towels, and sheets.

The preconsumer source comes from both off-cuts from t-shirts (the leftover material when t-shirts are cut out) and from textiles rejected because of defects, such as color. The t-shirt material, which naturally comes in an off-white color, is bleached white in one of the very large washing machines at Peerless that holds up to 300 pounds of material. “We bleach the material because this is what our customers prefer,” says Pritchard.

Because wiper cloths need to be absorbent, Peerless buys used clothing or cuttings that are cotton or high percentage cotton mixes. When the used clothing comes into the Peerless facility, it is first sorted by material type. It then goes to an area where workers, mostly women, stand at cutting machines that have a sharp blade. First they cut off the collar, buttons, and zippers; the remainder is then cut into rectangular shapes. Next the clothing is hand-packed, by weight, into cardboard boxes or large woven plastic bags for delivery.
Waste from Peerless includes the zippers and other parts cut off the used clothing in the rag-cutting process. They also end up with material that is not suitable for wipers, some of which gets sold to LA Fiber to be made into carpet pads.

In the clothing recycling business, where “everybody knows everybody else,” Pritchard is a relative newcomer. “This is my third career,” he says, “I started out as a civil engineer and then worked in banking. I always wanted to operate a small business. When my neighbor Lou Buty learned that the company’s former owner was considering retiring, we got together to buy Peerless. Buty also owns American Textile & Supply Inc., now Peerless’ sister company, located in Richmond, California.

Contact information:
Peter Pritchard
Peerless Materials Company
300 South Mission Road
Los Angeles, CA 90033
(323) 266-0313; 1-800-221-8103
sales@peerlessmaterials.com
www.peerlessmaterials.com

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Last updated: August 01, 2008