This week’s Providence Business News features a profile of Providence Working Waterfront Alliance member Sims Metal Management and their extensive metals recycling operation in Rhode Island.

Bill Huling, director of New England operations for Sims Metal Management, stepped back as another dump truck banged off the roll-on scales, reversed up to a three-story mound of broken metal chunks and, with the crash of a building collapse, dropped several additional tons at its foot.

Desolate-looking behind a security fence and the wall of scrap from the Allens Avenue pavement, Sims’ Providence harbor-front export terminal was reverberating with activity and the rattle of cascading iron on a frigid November Friday.

“They’re getting ready for the ship to come in,” Huling said, as a gust blew a mix of metal dust and marine-paint fumes at the workers attending to the scrap pile.

The ship was the Falcon Trader II, a 623-foot long Filipino-flagged freighter that would arrive two days later and spend the Thanksgiving holiday being stuffed by longshoremen with ferrous metal.

PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO