New home for Recycled UK brings five new jobs and the promise of a £1m breakthrough

A Black Country recycling specialist has fought back from the downturn in the plastics industry to double its turnover and complete its move into a new 30,000 sq ft processing facility in Coseley.

Recycled UK, which specialises in recycling post industrial waste, has managed to offset declining material prices by increasing its client base and introducing new services and is now predicting to turnover £1m by the end of 2010.

This marks a major period of growth for the firm and also comes as welcome news to the local manufacturing scene, with five new jobs created as a result of the expansion.

Paul Green, Founder and Managing Director, picked up the story:

“At the beginning of 2009 we were faced with major reductions in the value of plastic which left us with two options; the first was to stand still and probably go out of business and the second was to become more proactive, look at ways of doing things differently and actually attack the marketplace.”

He continued: “As anyone who knows us will tell you it was always going to be the latter and we sat down and looked at where new opportunities existed and what we needed to do to make the most of them.

“We couldn’t just sit back and wait for work to come to us so we went out and targeted new customers and the results were emphatic. From working predominantly with automotive, body repair and domestic products we quickly picked up contracts with local authorities, lighting manufacturers, high street retailers and even the people behind the big PVC David Beckham posters you see on motorway billboards.

“These new business wins have seen our turnover grow to nearly £600,000 and the only way we could continue to provide the level of service our customers expected was to move to a new site.”

Backed by this new approach, the company recently moved into the facility on Cannon Business Park, immediately doubling floorspace and giving them adjoining modern offices to base the administrative function in.

Recycled UK has also invested more than £110,000 into new shredding and granulating machines and a state-of-the-art picking line, which will see it diversify even further into recycling unsold CDs produced by recording artists.

“The investment in capital equipment has been made possible thanks to a £55,000 WRAP/AWM grant, which has helped us speed up growth by more than a year,” explained Paul, who intends to create a further five new green jobs over the next twelve months.

“With the new machines up and running we will be processing more than 80 tonnes of plastic every week and the good news is we will be selling it back into UK manufacturing and UK products.”

Recycled UK provides a complete service from full site surveys and production audits through to collection and safe removal of all plastic waste.

It pays higher than normal industry rates for sorted at source plastic before shredding then granulating it to be sold back into industry.

Blended plastic is 75% cheaper for manufacturers to buy and, whilst not suitable for high-end aesthetic products, there are hundreds of applications it can be used in, making it a valuable commodity for companies looking to reduce costs.

“The last twelve months have been a rollercoaster of emotion, but the downturn has certainly revolutionised the way we do business. We now provide stillages and waste boxes on customer sites and even have a team out following a local council picking up damaged wheelie bins ready for recycling,” said Paul.

Advantage West Midlands’ Tim Baldwin concluded: “This is excellent news all round with new green jobs being created locally and a specialist in recycling expanding to ensure more businesses have the option to divert plastic waste from landfill.

“The WRAP grant has turned an exciting concept into reality and the economic benefits are there for all to see.”