WALL-E might be the biggest movie star since Nemo, but if someone doesn’t keep a close eye on him, he too could be stolen and sold for scrap. They’re doing it in Cherry Hill, N.J., Red Orbit, Texas, Farmingham, N.M., and Kingston, Jamaica. In New Castle on Tyne, a dwarf admitted to burgling a house for scrap metal because it was his only career option in a “tall man’s world.” Thieves across the globe have discovered what Metalico, Inc. (AMEX:MEA) has known all along: the market for scrap metal is huge and growing, both in the United States and abroad, where developing countries have demonstrated a voracious appetite for the raw materials fueling their economic growth.

Metalico, founded in 1997 and headquartered in Cranford, N.J., carries a market cap of about $512 million. It has two decidedly unglamorous but increasingly profitable lines of business: recycling metal, and fabricating lead based products. Its recycling business buys ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal, converts it into usable forms, and sells it to a diverse and global industrial base, including contractors in the U.S. Department of Defense. Its products are used in the roofing, plumbing, radiation shielding, electronic soldering, ammunition, and automotive industries, and increasingly in China, Southeast Asia, and India, regions that are busily building ports and railroads as a means of shipping their products back to the United States.

Metalico’s lead fabrication business produces over one hundred different products and ranks as the largest in the United States. As a rapidly growing and acquisitive industry leader, Metalico is uniquely poised to take advantage of the perfect scrap metal storm:  growing demand, rising prices, and a world increasingly on the lookout for eco-friendly alternatives to mining new minerals...

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