‘Tens of thousands’ of fridges in limbo at former Unimetals site in Newport

The number has been quoted as being somewhere between 50,000 to 80,000 but remains unconfirmed.

Associated British Ports (ABP), which runs the wider port, has confirmed that it is in talks with “third parties” regarding the future of the fridge recycling facility.

An ABP spokesperson told letsrecycle.com: “The Unimetals site at the Port of Newport was part of the Unimetals liquidation process.

“ABP is discussions with third parties about the future of the site and the material on site.”

The site has not operated since its previous owner Unimetals went into administration in late 2025.

The facility was previously operated by Sims Metal and was acquired the year prior to the administration.

It is understood that the site processed around 600,000 units annually, although the capacity officially quoted on the Sims Metal site is one million.

Last week, Oxford County Council wrote to the government to urge it to take steps to bring the site back online.

Laura Gordon, Cabinet Member for Economy and the Environment at Oxfordshire County Council said reopening the site would “enable everyone to keep moving and recycling their fridges and freezers as normal”.

Fridge recycling capacity in the UK

The calls come as the UK has been facing a shortage of fridge and freezer recycling capacity in recent months.

Several factors have placed strain on the marketing, including the closure of the Unimetals site in November 2025.

The sector’s capacity was further reduced this year by a series of fires at specialist treatment facilities. In February, a fire forced the closure of EMR’s fridge recycling plant at Darlaston in the West Midlands.

Just two months later, Wiser Recycling’s treatment facility at Thetford was severely damaged by fire. The site processed a significant proportion of the electrical waste collected at Norfolk’s household waste recycling centres, including refrigeration appliances.

The abnormal number of heatwaves this summer has also had an impact. Higher temperatures typically result in increased volumes of waste fridges entering the local authority and retailer takeback networks, while extreme heat can also reduce processing efficiency and increase the risk of plant downtime.

The situation has led several local authorities to look at pausing collections of these items or adopting other approaches while the bottleneck of fridges waiting for reprocessing is cleared.

Councils which have been forced to pause collections or take other measures include Oxford County Council, Carmarthenshire, Norfolk, South Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Peterborough.

It is important to note that not all local authorities, recyclers or compliance schemes have been affected and the impact will depend on geographical location and local storage capacity.