Infrastructure boost for UK plastics sector

Redcar-based Greenstar Waste Exchange Services – which is the plastics recycling arm of Irish-owned waste firm Greenstar UK – has received £50,000 in grant funding from the One North East regional development agency to help upgrade its Redcar plant to handle mixed plastics for recycling.

The grant, which will be drawn from the £60 million investment programme Tees Valley Industrial Programme (TVIP), is intended to go towards the £187,000 needed to upgrade the power supply at the Wilton Industrial Complex where the Greenstar facility is based.

The funding, awarded yesterday (March 29), adds to the £1.187 million the firm received earlier this month from WRAP from its £2 million mixed plastic capital grant competition (see letsrecycle.com story).

The project to develop a mixed plastic recycling facility at the Redcar site of Greenstar WES is set to cost £4 million in total and, once it becomes operational in 2013, the firm plans to process 20,000 tonnes of mixed plastics sourced from households and local authorities in the surrounding area every year at the site.

James Donaldson, managing director of Greenstar WES, said: “We are grateful for the strong local support we continue to receive. This project is critical to the UK as the first step in diverting some of the large amounts of plastic packaging that are unnecessarily landfilled. It is good that Wilton, the original home of plastics manufacturing, is so involved in its recycling.”

AWS

The grant for Greenstar comes one week (March 22) after fellow plastics recycling firm AWS Eco Plastics' announced that it had begun to rebuild its fire-hit Hemswell bottle recycling facility in Lincolnshire.

The facility, which received £14 million in investment to increase its processing capacity from 100,000 tonnes-a-year to 140,000 tonnes-a-year, was damaged by a fire that broke out in August 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, following the award of planning permission in mid-February, AWS has commenced construction work on its new sort line and storage facility and, when complete, the site is expected to be twice the size of the original plant.

The new building is 9000 metres2, with an eaves height of over 16 metres. The building is split into three distinct fire zones, each with their own fire protection.

Commercial director, Duncan Oakes, said: “At the time the fire was devastating for all staff at AWS, but seeing the frame go up has been a real lift and helps us now focus on the future.

“Having walked around the new building I am really looking forward to seeing the installation of equipment, which is expected to start in the next couple of months. So far everything is running to schedule and we expect to be operational this summer.”

AWS had been helped in the immediate aftermath of the fire by WRAP, which issued the plastics recycling firm a ‘soft loan' to help it to continue to trade (see letsrecycle.com story).