The Canadian-owned company is currently hoping to set up a second gypsum recycling plant in the South East of England ahead of the July 16 2005 deadline, when the material will only be accepted in hazardous waste landfills.
Gypsum is a major ingredient in plasterboard, which arises as waste from the manufacturing process and also in construction and demolition waste.
NWGR has already been working with Lafarge Plasterboard on a plant in Bristol, which is the first in Europe to use the Canadian technology. Although the plant does not have specific contracts to receive material in the 6 months it has been running, waste has been received from Smiths Industries.
The target for the plant is to eventually recycle up to 100,000 tonnes of gypsum a year, but at the moment the company has said transport costs are too high to achieve this rate. NWGR is planning on expanding to new locations elsewhere in the UK to allow waste gypsum producers nationwide the chance to recycle the material.
Alongside Lafarge there are two other plasterboard producers in the UK, Knauf Plasterboards and British Gypsum, and NWGR believe that for gypsum recycling in the UK to match the production of waste gypsum all three companies are going to need to be on board.
Byron Harker, international marketing advisor for NWGR, explained: “There is a quarter of a million tonnes of new construction off cuts in the UK, and half as much again of strip out material. If we are able to get all the gypsum companies recycling at full capacity the country is capable of recycling this.”
Bulk tonnage
The Bristol site opened in April 2004 and since that date has recycled over 20,000 tonnes of waste. The current charge is around 20 a tonne, but NWGR have said that they will only except “bulk tonnage” deliveries, which are taken by appointment.
NWGR developed its technique to recycle wet plasterboard in the 1980s. Mr Harker said: “Anyone can beat up dry plasterboard and remove the paper, the difficulty comes when the plasterboard is wet, we have developed a technique using a very specific grinding and screening process which allows us to recycle the gypsum when wet.”
The company currently runs plants in Vancouver, Toronto and Seattle, with plans to move further into the USA with two States – Florida and Massachusetts – expected to reclassify gypsum as a hazardous substance soon. GNWR are also looking for new sites in Europe, Australia and Japan.
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