PhillyInc

Demolition of the abandoned Tidewater Grain Co. elevator last weekend may illustrate something poignant about our manufacturing sector after all: It has reduced to rubble one vestige of this region's economy and will replace it with perhaps a symbol of our future manufacturing role: a mountain of scrap metal.

Camden Iron & Metal Inc., whose subsidiary Preston Properties bought the Tidewater site in August for roughly $3 million, says it spent about $2 million to raze the structure and make way for a new metal-shredding operation on the river. So says Howard Cain, a consultant to the Camden-based company run by Joe Balzano.

Cain told us that Camden Iron & Metal ships has been looking for a site closer t the river for about two years. It ships about 70 percent of its scrap out by water to manufacturing plants overseas or in the South. It will relocate its current Philadelphia operations to the 12-acre Tidewater site and close its smaller site at 26th and Penrose. Cain said no decision has been made on what will become of the Penrose site. At the Tidewater site, the new pile of scrap metal should begin to rise later next year and will replace a concrete salvage operation there run by Carbon Services Corp. of Leighton, Pa.

So one way or another, recycling and scrap seem to be in Philly's future.

- Thomas Ginsberg