Our History

AFTER sixty years at the forefront of scrap metal recycling, HW Taroni is an established company and we’re immensely proud of all that’s been achieved.

We’ve gone from having a tiny little yard and used grit, determination and long decades of elbow grease to become the undisputed champion of recycling in this unbreakable old city.

In the very early days our team were determined to clean up the streets of Birmingham by getting rid of any old cars people had abandoned to rust and decay.

We’d pick them up and recycle scrap metal back into use and had such a strong role in making Birmingham a better place that we earned a reputation for our commitment to the city.

Our original driving force was Henry Taroni.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

For those of you good folks who’ve come to us by Googling, “Scrap metal near me” and therefore probably haven’t heard of our founder, Henry, please allow us to explain a little.

Henry (the HW in our name), was a flamboyant figure, counting champion boxers and Miss Worlds among his celebrated friends and business associates.

Henry’s ability to draw attention made the Taroni name famous across the West Midlands and by the early Sixties, if you were a Brummie, you didn’t talk about taking your old car to the local scrap yard, you talked about taking it to Taroni’s. And it’s been the same ever since.

The stories that have come out of the Taroni business are ridiculously colourful.

Ask us about the time Miss World came along to open our first frag machine. Or why we have a genuine Yellow Submarine in the yard.

Ask how many world champ boxers we’ve had come see our operation.

And ask how we didn’t manage to “make a mint” but how we managed to actually scrap one. No kidding ! Look at the pictures of Henry recycling the famous old Birmingham Mint.

We could tell you about the time we took a flash Mercedes for scrap, only to find a Shetland goat cozied up in the passenger seat. The story of how we eventually managed to get that fierce little fella out of there would take us all day to tell.

Henry encouraged professionalism in every way but admitted ours is the type of business that encourages you to always expect the unexpected.

And we do to this day. Which served us well when we tumbled into perhaps the most testing and exhausting period of the company’s history…