The growth and expansion of Severnside Recycling, especially with retail customers, was highlighted today (June 24) alongside the annual results of parent company DS Smith.
Miles Roberts, group chief executive, noted that Severnside, “which recovers waste paper as the raw material for use in our paper mills, continued to make progress collecting an increased quantity of paper and offering more added-value services to a number of new retail customers.” 
Looking back to the last financial year, Mr Roberts said that DS Smith's UK paper business was “significantly affected” by the impacts of lower demand and lower prices for corrugated casemaking material in 2009/10 – the company is the UK's major manufacturer of paper and liner for cardboard boxes.
Rising prices for used cardboard – old KLS – hit the company's margins at the end of 2009 and into 2010 – earlier this year prices rose significantly because of competition for material from Eastern Europe.
Kemsley
On the selling side, Mr Roberts said: “The high-quality, lightweight CCM which we have been producing at Kemsley since early 2009 continues to be favourably received by customers. Our UK corrugated packaging business produced a good result and grew its market share on a platform of service and innovation.
“Our emphasis on the FMCG sector and higher value-added products assisted our performance significantly, when compared to the UK corrugated industry as a whole. Key investments have been made to increase our capability to support the growth in demand for shelf-ready packaging, improve print quality innovation and continue the roll out of high-performance, lighter-weight boxes. As we enter 2010/11, we are experiencing modest improvements in demand offset by increasing waste paper input costs and CCM prices. We will build on the strong market positions achieved to date and are well-positioned for growth.”
Commenting on the current financial year, Mr Roberts said: “Trading in the current financial year has started well and is in line with our expectations. We are experiencing increasing sales volumes due to the continuing recovery in market conditions. We are also benefiting from the success of our service and product offering.”
Subscribe for free