Hadfield Wood Recyclers expands into South East

The company, which is family-run, has leased a two-acre site at Tilbury Docks in Thurrock, Essex, where it will accept all grade of non-hazardous waste wood material from May 18.

Here, the wood will be sorted, stored and pre-crushed to reduce its size before being sent to either Hadfield's recycling facility at Droylsden in Manchester or to its sister company, UK Wood Recyling, at Grangetown on Teesside for reprocessing into a variety of products ranging from animal bedding to biomass fuel.

The move follows two years of searching by Hadfield for a suitable site near London and enables the firm to transport its wood by sea and rail as well as by road while it searches for a site to develop infrastructure to recycle the material locally.

Geoff Hadfield, managing director of Hadfield Wood Recyclers, said: “This is a very exciting project for us because there is a huge demand in the area for a wood recycler who can take all grades of wood and recycle it into sustainable and environmentally-friendly products.”

“This is just the start of our presence in the area. Ultimately, we will be looking to build a full processing plant to cover the south east, so we can process and clean the wood and manufacture our products, as we already do at our sites in Manchester and Teesside,” he added.

The new site will be able to handle 100,000 tonnes of waste wood a year and will offer a tip-in facility, accepting skips, walking floor trailers, containers and waste management vehicles as well as smaller loads. Material that will be accepted includes MDF, chipboard, pallets, plywood and melamine.

Tilbury was chosen because of its direct access to the docks and because of its proximity to London.

Mr Hadfield, who is also chairman of the Wood Recyclers Association trade body, said: “We have been getting increasing requests to take waste wood from the London and South East area. Like a lot of companies nowadays we are very conscious of our carbon footprint so looking to the future we wanted a site which can utilise alternatives to road, such as water and rail transportation. Therefore Tilbury was an ideal location.”