John Fellonneau has had a weighty problem – tipping the scales at about 25,000 tons per month – lifted from his shoulders, and he couldn’t be happier.

Fellonneau, president of Bowling Green-based Southern Recycling, has struggled for a few years with the need for a new facility to handle the volume of metals, paper and plastic processed at the company’s four-acre Clay Street plant in downtown Bowling Green.

Those struggles are over, as evidenced Tuesday by the unveiling and ribbon-cutting for Southern Recycling’s new location on a 20-acre site on North Graham Street near Louisville Road, north of the city.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Fellonneau, Southern Recycling’s president since 2003. “This facility has been in the planning stages for almost four years. It will help support the growth of Warren County and the numerous businesses that have been moving in.”

Many of those businesses deal with metals such as aluminum, steel and copper, and the scrap ends up being processed by Southern Recycling. The industrial growth has fueled the growth of Fellonneau’s company, which has gone from processing about 500 tons of metal per month in 2003 to handling 25,000 tons of metal, paper and plastic each month.

“To push that much material through there became a real challenge,” Fellonneau said.

The new $7.5 million facility can handle that volume and more, he said.

Built by Bowling Green’s Stewart Richey Construction, the new facility includes an 8,000-square-foot office building, a 50,000-square-foot warehouse, a 12,000-square-foot maintenance building and more than five acres of concrete to handle the scrap processing.

Southern Recycling, among the first nongrocery businesses acquired by Bowling Green-based Houchens Industries, will now be able to process up to 70,000 tons of scrap per month.

Having such a facility in Warren County is a plus not only for Houchens and Southern Recycling but for current and future manufacturers, according to Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Ron Bunch.

“We have several companies now that focus on aluminum products,” Bunch said. “Having this facility here as part of the overall supply chain will help with expansions and with attracting new industries.”

Fellonneau pointed out that the new plant will focus exclusively on industrial and commercial clients, with the company’s curbside recycling headquarters remaining at the Clay Street location.

“We’ll keep the Clay Street facility open,” he said. “Our curbside recycling program will operate out of there, as will our retail business in which individuals can come in to sell materials. We’ll remodel that facility and make it a little more friendly for people coming in.”

Fellonneau hinted last year that the company’s curbside recycling program could be undergoing changes, including transition to a “single-stream” process in which the recyclables go through magnetic separation at the Clay Street plant.

But Southern Recycling must first renew the curbside recycling contract it’s held since 1995.

“We’ll be re-bidding the curbside contract next year,” Fellonneau said.