Industries make use of a baler machine to compress certain items like plastic, cardboard, paper or other shredded materials for the purpose of material recycling facilities. Crops, straw or hay are systematically compressed into bales in order to bind them together with the help of baler in agriculture.

For the purpose of harvesting agriculture, equipment is employed called 'hay baler'. With the help of this equipment crops are cut and gathered to make hay for feeding the cattle. It is also useful to cut hay and finally it is compressed into square or round shape of bales that occupy less space and make transportation easy.

Though hay balers facilitate easy transportation and good storage capacity, they require more attention. Small square bales normally weigh 18-32 kg; need to be sheltered from rain or snow in order to protect them from getting rotted. As for the large round bales, they are safe in the open air. Rain will run off the sides of such bales because of their round shape, so there is no such threat.

In the past, bales were thrown on the floor and their twines were removed manually. The haystack was dried and compacted into bales that had to be torn and tattered for use. Today, a bale shredder has come to replace this manual process of handling bale by its rotary cutting teeth. That is why most of the farmers prefer to have such bale shredders.

In industries, byproducts and other waste like office paper are compacted by using balers. Some recycling companies use such balers with a view to reuse the waste for future production. Balers are made of steel which are hydraulically operated. They are used to compress the loaded materials.

Baler is also used to compact items like plastics and metals. There are some compactors and baler used in industry in order to extract oils or liquids from metals. Since recycling becomes necessary in industries in order to reuse materials, baling facilities are very much in demand. For example, scrap metal is recycled into new sheet metal which is used in automobiles.