Newlife was founded by industrial chemist Keith Harrison and Graham Griffiths, who has experience in sales and marketing, and set up operations on the Rudford Industrial Estate in West Sussex in September 2009.
The process sees waste paint collected from six civic amenity sites in Hampshire under a deal with the county council.
Paint is taken to West Sussex where it is sorted by colour into individual mixing tanks and then homogenised through equipment developed by Mr Harrison before being brought back to the right chemical specification as when it entered the process – including the right pH balance. It then undergoes a standard paint-making process.
Non-hazardous
Importantly, the company only handles water-based emulsion paint, which is classified as non-hazardous under the Chemical Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply (CHIP) Regulations, and makes up around two-thirds of unused paint on the market. The company said it had been advised “not to bother” looking at the other third.
This means that the firm does not need an environmental permit for hazardous waste and its operation is classed as ‘low risk' by the Environment Agency.
Mr Harrison also said that the firm had successfully lobbied for such waste paint to be classed as low risk under the revised EU Waste Framework Directive – which sets the ground-rules for waste across Europe -meaning that such operations would remain viable.
He said: “We got legislation into the Waste Framework Directive, as there isn't much to do with paint in it and to get permission to do what we are trying to do meant nine months working with the Low Risk Committee to get waste paint put in there.”
Markets
Newlife Paints soon hopes to be able to process five tonnes of paint a week and given current feedstock intends to build this up to 50-100 tonnes and potentially open facilities in the West Midlands and the North East – selling the end product into a variety of markets.
Albert Harrison, northern regional manager for Newlife Paints, and Keith's brother, said: “We have already had very favourable interest from rather large people and I am strictly told not to name them and we have had some very good queries coming in.”
First
Describing the operation in a report prepared for West Sussex council's planning committee in September, the county development divisional manager said that the facility would be “the first in the UK, let alone West Sussex.”
He added: “The application is for a pioneering proposal in the UK, in a field of activity in which the applicant has over 25 years' expertise. The applicant is currently in discussion with the Environment Agency (EA) regarding research and development into waste paint recovery and recycling, because the proposal is so new in the UK.”
Commenting on how his company fitted into the wider scheme of things, Keith Harrison acknowledged the similar work carried out by Community RePaint, the nationwide network of 65 community-based paint reuse organisations.
However, he stressed that Community RePaint's members only redistributed paint and that Newlife were actually able to take paint off them and recycle it.
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