Recyclers depend on their balers to take care of business reliably and efficiently. Possessing a baler that is designed and built to perform flawlessly hour after hour and day after day can make the difference between profits and losses; between meeting deadlines or disappointing customers; between creating dense, perfectly-shaped bales or producing sloppy, rejected bales. Dependability is the key factor in falling on the correct side of all those equations.

Fortunately, for the past decade baler operators have been able to turn to a new star in the baler constellation that has raised the standards of dependability: EXCEL Manufacturing.

Located, appropriately enough, in the North Star State, EXCEL Manufacturing of St. Charles, Minnesota, has emerged as a guiding star in several key areas of the baler industry: design innovation, quality of manufacturing, reliability, service and support.

A New Star

EXCEL Manufacturing was founded in 1991 by Bryan Fisher and a partner after Fisher had spent just a short amount of time in the recycling equipment industry. "It was clear that the Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) wanted better multi-material balers than the ones that were available," says Fisher.

Fisher drew up his design for what would be the EX60 on a door that was being used as a table in his office. The machine was reverse engineered based upon what the MRFs needed. He included a wider hopper and an innovative cross-cylinder design that allows materials to be compressed more compactly in a shorter cycle time, and to keep the machine's length short and overall footprint small.

The decision was made at the outset - and has been adhered to ever since - that the company would never compromise on components or on structural quality during the manufacturing process.

Excel has designed this machines to be built for endurance. In the manufacturing process integrity is maintained by sourcing quality components and making sure each pump, hose, switch, plate, nut and bolt meets exact specifications. Assembly is carefully supervised, and EXCEL's personnel or authorized service providers supervise each delivery and installation.

From the beginning, EXCEL balers have been manufactured with the type of hand-crafted precision associated with luxury cars.

What EXCEL did not have in its earliest days was the type of marketing budget that allows luxury cars to be marketed globally and shipped from the Rolls-Royce shop in England to California. But EXCEL's marketing limitations in its earliest days proved to be of great benefit to MRF operators and other recyclers in EXCEL's home state of Minnesota.

EXCEL Manufacturing met with its initial success going from county to county in Minnesota, and the company made the determination that it could best service its customers by selling and servicing its equipment directly before eventually making links with a handful of key, qualified dealers.

We want to service our own equipment, and we wanted to guarantee that it is competitively priced.