The investment, announced last Friday, will see BPI spending about 2 million at the plant to double its capacity. The expansion will include a second washing plant which is due to be commissioned in June this year and will allow Dumfries to process a further 15,000 tonnes per year of agricultural waste plastic, taking its total capacity to 30,000 tonnes.
In contrast to other sectors of the plastics recycling industry, BPI is committing the funds as it does not fear that the plant will run short of material because of export pressures.
Andrew Green, managing director of bpi.recycled products, explained: “For the plastics recycling sector in the UK it can be hard to get enough waste. We are able to source the farm material because the contamination levels of soil, often half the weight is soil, making transporting it more difficult and expensive.”
Producer responsibility for farm films is also behind the decision to invest alongside the growing pressure from farmers for outlets to recycle their waste plastic in light of the the new Agricultural Waste Regulations, which come into force on 15 May 2006, and require farmers to stop dumping or burning waste on their farmland.
Mr Green said: “We are delighted that in response to their recent consultation DEFRA have accepted the case for statutory regulations in this area. Since the collapse of our voluntary industry scheme, Farm Films Producers’ Group, 10 years ago, we have always maintained that the most efficient and lowest cost way to ensure the recycling of plastics from farms was via a mandatory national framework. To a large extent our investment is ahead of a market which will only become sustainable once these regulations come into force. However the announcement from DEFRA has given us the confidence to take a long-term view of further investment in this sector and to subsidise its operation until the market has developed.”
BPI has no plans to collect the waste farm plastics itself. It has worked with the Irish Farm Films Producers’ Group (IFFPG) in the Irish Republic for many years and, for the collection of waste farm plastic in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
To obtain material for the expansion, BPI has chosen to work specifically with Birch Farm Plastics which is extending its collection activity from its current base in Wales and the Border Counties to the UK as a whole. Generally, it finds there is about 300 kgs of plastics to be collected from farms each year.
Mr Green added: “The Birch family have been involved in collecting farm plastic waste for over 16 years and are probably the most experienced collectors in the country. They have a very efficient, low-cost collection system which is extremely popular amongst the farmers who use their services. We are delighted to be working with them again.”
At present, much of the material processed in Dumfries comes from farms in Ireland although some comes from the continent, including Germany. Now with renewed market confidence, BPI is also considering further similar investments in our plant in South Wales and in the Irish Republic.
BPI set up its farm film recycling facility in Dumfries in 1995 to recycle waste arising from the Farm Film Producers’ Group. This was a voluntary industry scheme set up by the major producers and suppliers of farm films into the UK market and was levy-based, where an Environmental Protection Contribution of 100/tonne was applied to the sale of silage wrap to fund its eventual recycling. In its first year of operation the scheme collected 4,000 tonnes of waste plastic from 5,000 farms across the UK. The scheme collapsed in 1996 when two importers refused to pay and this was seen as “free-riding” which meant that they had a market advantage.
Dumfries recycles the farm plastics into its range of Plaswood wood-substitute products which are used as park and garden furniture, street and countryside signs, bollards and marine decking.
Register for free to comment