Wood Yew Waste invests 1m at its Exeter site

Wood Yew Waste moved into the completed building at the Greendale Business Park in Woodbury Salterton in January this year.

The unit is much bigger than our previous premises on the business park, said founder and managing director Clem Spencer who is also chairman of the Wood Recyclers Association. We have a 2.5 acre site which includes a 22,500 square foot building and a concreted yard of half an acre.

We now have the most modern wood recycling facility in the UK to take us into a new era, he said.

Until early 2010, Wood Yew Wastes wood chipping operation was based at a six acre site in a disused quarry in Plymouth, which operated under an exemption.

However, as the operation was out in the open, the company had little control over noise and dust. This, coupled with changes to the permitting regulations and a need to keep pace with the growth of its business, prompted the move to the enclosed facility in Exeter.

Now, the company has purchased an IQR FlexHammer 1800 wood chipper, a Warrior1800 screen and a water mist spray system to minimise airborne dust inside the building. Outside it uses a DustBoss to keep it under control.

The company still retains a bulking station in Plymouth and has opened another one at St Dennis in Cornwall only this week, which both feed material into the Exeter branch.

The beauty of us now is that we cover the whole South West Corridor, from Taunton to Penzance, said Mr Spencer. The Cornwall dept will increase out recycling by an estimated 250 tonnes of wood and 100 tonnes of plasterboard a year.

Plymouth

Wood Yew Waste started out more than a decade ago, when, working in partnership with Plymouth city council, it set up an operation at the Chelson Meadow landfill site in 1999 to recycle the wood that was being landfilled by local industry and also that being disposed of at the councils civic amenity site.

From an initial turnover of less than 50 tonnes of wood per week, it has steadily increased the volume it recycles to over 800 tonnes per week today.

Now, the company accepts all types of waste wood ranging from pallets and packaging waste to demolition timber, joinery off-cuts and general household wood waste. Its client base ranges from national waste management companies and local council civic amenity sites to skip companies, builders and the public.

It takes wood from civic amenity sites throughout Devon and Cornwall which is used for biomass, processes wood from the construction and demolition sector for use in the chipboard industry and uses waste wood packaging to produce animal bedding and fuel.

The company supplies woodchip to the Norbord chipboard factory at South Molton in North Devon, while biomass is sold to AW Jenkinsons/Stobart Biomass. It has also signed a contract to sell its cleanest woodchip to Forrest Fuel, for use as fuel in non-WID compliant boilers and has agreed to supply Mole Valley Farmers with animal bedding.

Other products the company produces include Premier Garden Mulch, Springbed equestrian bedding, two types of farm animal bedding and Tiger Wood Chip for use in landscaping on golf courses.

More recently, Wood Yew Waste has expanded to provide recycling services for MDF, hardboard, sawdust and, notably, plasterboard.

Mr Spencer said: Plasterboard recycling is our new age market and we meet the PAS 109 standard. The end products we sometimes blend with animal bedding and we are hopingtosellsome toa local tile-making company to use it in their compound to make new tiles.

Commenting on the investment and how far his company has come, Mr Spencer said: This was a major financial commitment for us but we did it with confidence as we had already grown enormously as a business.

Having this facility has given us more space and opened the door for further growth.