Sims chief Graham Davy departs

Graham Davy has departed the senior management team of metal recycling giant Sims Group, the company has revealed.

In a statement published yesterday (March 20), Sims Metal Management, said: Effective immediately Graham Davy chief executive Europe and Global Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS), is no longer employed by the company.

A spokesman for the company said that further details of the reasons for his departure would not be made public.

Mr Davy served as global chief executive of Sims Recycling Solutions since 2007, having joined the company in 2000. He has also held the role of deputy president of the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA) since October 2011 (see letsrecycle.com story).

He is credited with growing Sims Recycling Solutions into one of the worlds largest electronics recycling companies, employing over 3,000 people across the Americas, Europe, Australasia, Asia and Africa.

His departure comes a month after Sims was forced to write down the value of its stock by $78 million (50 million) following an internal investigation into activities at two of its WEEE recycling sites in the UK at Newport, South Wales and Long Marston, Warwickshire.

Sims attributed the write down to the failure to adequately supervise operations and failure to maintain controls over financial reporting relating to its inventory (see letsrecycle.com story).

Appointment

Meanwhile, Sims has confirmed that the managing director for Sims Recycling Solutions in Continental Europe, Hans-Otto Hagemann, has been appointed as the acting managing director for Sims Recycling Solutions UK division.

Sims Recycling Solutions processes over 150,000 tonnes of WEEE at 12 sites across the UK, including household and non-household WEEE. Its UK headquarters is based close to the Long Marston facility.

The Newport WEEE reprocessing facility, opened in February 2009, was built at a cost of 12 million. The plant uses technology to separate materials including copper, aluminium and plastics from waste electrical which are sold for manufacture into new products.

The company also has facilities in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany, recycling around 300,000 tonnes of electronic waste each year.