Expansion for Essex-based mixed plastics recycling firm

Express Recycling and Plastics – which is owned by Dutch energy company Express Power – is to launch a trading arm on November 1 to deal with the supply of mixed rigid plastics to companies across the EU.

The launching of the trading company, which has already established some regional contacts and will look to trade with Holland, Italy and Belgium among others, follows a series of improvements undertaken at the company's Essex facility to increase capacity and reduce contamination.

This follows increasing interest in mixed plastics recycling in the UK – with only a limited number of facilities capable of sorting and reprocessing the material.

Expansion

Over the past three months, Express has installed a second line and a picking plant operated by 12 employees at its Rainham site, which was developed in 2005 as Britain's first hard plastics recycling facility (see letsrecycle.com story).

The company currently processes polypropylene, polyethylene, polystyrene and Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (ABS) – which is commonly found in WEEE materials such as TVs and computers. In addition, Express has also forged links with the neighbouring Ford plant at Dagenham for the reprocessing of polypropylene bumpers.

The company has also improved efficiency of space and quality of material at its site with the introduction of more stringent contamination rules, which the company claims had improved the quality of rigid plastics being accepted and processed before being sent off for remoulding.

Education

Terry Brown, sales and purchasing manager at Express, said education has played an important role in improving the quality of material entering the site, which in turn improved the quality of material that can leave the site.

In a bid to further impart this educational message, Express will soon undertake trips to local schools as a means of further pushing the recycling message to help ingrain recycling as habits for children at an early age. Mr Brown said: “If we can do it from the bottom up then it will get to the point where people do it by habit.”

In addition to the improvements at its existing facility and launching of the trading company, Express is also actively trying to source premises for the development of two more sorting lines somewhere in the UK, with Yorkshire being touted as a possible location.

The expansion of the mixed plastic recycling company comes in the wake of increased interest being shown in the product, with the Government-funded Waste & Resources Action Programme commissioning further research into collection methods. (see letsrecycle.com story)