The business now known as Cohen Recycling started with two teenage brothers who immigrated to the U.S. from Russia at the turn of the 20th century and settled in Middletown, Ohio. Around the same time, Middletown also became home to the American Rolling Mill Company, or ARMCO, a mill producing rolled sheets of steel. ARMCO was the predecessor to what is today known as AK Steel. Its first steel mill opened in Middletown in 1901, at a time when technological innovations were making it more viable to work with existing steel in new ways.
For the Cohen brothers, the steel mill presented an attractive opportunity to support their families – not as steel workers but as scrap metal peddlers. Cohen Brothers, Inc. was incorporated in 1924. To this day, Cohen and AK Steel remain close neighbors in Middletown.