Greenstar announces further £1m expansion
Recycling firm Greenstar UK has announced plans to invest £1 million in expanding its UK material recovery facility (MRF) network with the development of facilities in Derbyshire and South Oxfordshire.
And, the Aylesbury-based company has fitted £250,000 worth of glass processing technology to improve the quality of the material processed at its ‘super-MRF' at Aldridge, outside Birmingham.
The investment in new facilities and technology comes despite what Greenstar called "a few difficult months" and is set to see the number of facilities proposed under the company's UK MRF network increased to ten.
Ian Wakelin, chief executive of Greenstar UK, said: "Through the last few difficult months, Greenstar has continued processing and selling recyclables because we produce a quality product. We kept moving forward, and remain focused on pursuing Greenstar's goal of being the biggest recycling-led business in the UK."
MRFs
At present, Greenstar is developing a "feeder spine" of smaller MRFs which feed into larger MRFs situated on the edge of large urban areas.
The two new MRFs in Derbyshire and South Oxfordshire will be feeder MRFs and are expected to provide a further 80,000 tonnes of sorting capacity for the firm.
In South Oxfordshire, the company plans to construct a 30,000 tonnes-a-year capacity facility by June 2009 at a cost of £500,000, which will process dry recyclables from around 100,000 households. Cans, plastics and glass collected at the facility will be bulked and sent to the company's ‘super-MRF' at Aldridge, outside Birmingham for reprocessing. Paper and cardboard are expected to be sold to UK reprocessors.
The development comes hot-on-the-heels of Greenstar subsidiary Verdant winning a £50 million contract for waste and recycling collections in South Oxfordshire and its neighbouring district Vale of White Horse (see letsrecycle.com story).
At the same time, Greenstar has begun construction of another £500,000 MRF in Derby, having announced plans for the site last November (see letsrecycle.com story).
The 50,000 tonnes capacity Victory Road plant is intended to be operational by the end of March and Greenstar plans to sell paper collected by Derby city council for reprocessing back into the UK market and send plastics to its Aldridge facility. The remaining fractions are also set to be sold into the UK market.
Glass
As well as developing new facilities, Greenstar is also improving its MRF at Aldridge. The firm has introduced £250,000 worth of glass reprocessing technology into the facility improve the quality of collected cullet for use in remelt.
Having developed and tested the equipment through December and January, the company claims that the now operational technology has won praise from glass reprocessors over the quality of material coming through the 200-tonnes-a-day system.
Glass in MRFs has proven a contentious issues in the past, with the glass industry highly critical of material collected commingled.
Mr Wakelin refuted claims that MRFs led to lesser quality materials in general and also "firmly rebut" claims made by the Campaign of Real Recycling to minister for waste Jane Kennedy and Welsh environment minister Jane Davidson over commingled collections leading to stockpiling over alleged lesser quality.
Mr Wakelin said: "In Defra's 2007/08 league table of the top 20 English councils for collecting dry recyclables, eight authorities, including the top pair, commingled everything. A further nine commingled plastics, paper, card, cans and some aerosol containers - and just three separated glass out from the other commingled materials."