Essex-based Crow Environmental, which has been running for 12 months, is one of a handful of companies in the UK offering a depollution system to end-of-life vehicle recyclers.
Under the End-of-Life Vehicle Directive car dismantlers and recyclers have to remove components such as oils, petrol and coolant before a vehicle is shredded.
Along with this, shredded vehicle residues which contain hazardous substances are no longer allowed to be disposed of in normal landfills since the end of co-disposal last month. It is estimated that over 2 million vehicles will be scrapped in Britain this year.
Crow Environmental's co-director, Bryan Crow, said: “Most vehicle recyclers had enquired about our system but had not made the investment before the regulation (ELV) was suddenly upon them.”
The company has already built and installed 30 systems and currently has another 47 systems on order. “To say our orders have increased dramatically over the past month would be an understatement,” said co-director Bill Baird.
To deal with new business coming in, the company, which currently employs 18 staff, has had to look at recruiting more engineers to keep up with demand, said Mr Baird.
The system works by extracting waste fluids from vehicles using probes and diaphragm pumps, and delivers them to one of seven large tanks outside of the building before the dismantler passes them on to a recycler.
It comes with seven tanks for either petrol, diesel, dirty fuel, windscreen wash fluid, coolant, hydraulic oil and engine oil with containers made to size starting at 715 litres and going up to 5,000 litres capacity.
“It depends on the size of the company, but most of the time the dismantler will need to have at least 1,000-2,000 litres of fluid at a time to pass on to a recycler,” said Mr Baird. “Some companies are also ordering perhaps four systems at a time to get cars done quicker.”
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