Smiles all round at Sunderland recycling operation

May 22 2009 By Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

THEY SAY MUCK AND BRASS GO HAND IN HAND. ALASTAIR GILMOUR DISCOVERS PRIDE AND WASTE DO TOO

Stuart says: “We’ve just spent time running around Europe looking at various systems and bought this one from Holland. The
Dutch are much better than us at recycling and disposing waste. They don’t have any landfill left and if you dig a hole
there it fills up with water, so theymake huge mounds.

“Otherwise it’s all local companieswe use. If you use a local firm you’re cutting down on transport costs and you'll eventually get better processing. It’s also managed better; we’re a waste processing plant not a call centre in Birmingham.We believe in keepingmoney in the local economy;we buy our trucks and tyres from North East companies. It’s much better than it going off into some bank account in France or Germany with nobody here seeing the benefit of it.”

There is a word of warning, however. Just because we’re thinking North East First doesn’t always mean the response is going to be what’s expected – our services have to continually improve, organisations must never sit back and be always willing to learn from others.

As Alex Smiles puts it: “You’ve got to go through the bad times to know how to deal with them. Sometimes national companies have the answer before you ask the question.”

All smiles

ALEX Smiles confirms Stuart’s insistence on building and consolidating a North East supply chain – a fleet of 40 trucks is
certainly good local business – it makes sense for a start but it’s also how he learned his trade.

“We don’t go any further than the North East for suppliers,” he says. “Everything comes from within a 30-mile radius, but a lot of the end product goes out to the Far East and India.

“I started off in this business by accident. I was working in London in 1965 as a research assistant. I was getting sick of the job anyway and I was coming up the A1 in my £40 Hillman Minx when I got a puncture at Peterborough. I was told it would cost £10 for a new tyre.

“When I got home I went to a car breaker down by the river and asked how much a tyre and wheel would cost. ‘Thirty bob’ he said. I got a bit interested and asked how much for a dynamo. ‘Thirty bob’, he said. How much for an air filter? ‘Thirty bob’. How much will you give me for the car? ‘Thirty bob’.

“I thought, this doesn’t sound like a bad business to be in, so when I came back to Sunderland I advertised for scrap cars and started breaking them up. In November 1965 I had a load of car shells so I rang Freddie Shepherd and asked how much scrap was. He said between £5 and £68 a ton, depending on the grade of metal. I split them all up and he sent a wagon over. I got £65 for the scrap metal and also had all the 30 bobs. I thought, ‘I’m in’.

“That £65 from Freddie Shepherd gave me the confidence to continue, so I bought some other land in Deptford – you need land for this job, you need acreage. We were getting contracts from everywhere; we just let it grow.

“My scrapyard was my training ground for waste – with the demise of British Coal I got involved in the waste disposal industry. I was there, I’d got it. Other industries were dying along with coal and what was left? Nothing but waste.

"I bought the land where we are now – the old James Laing shipyard – in 1998 and tidied it all up between then and 2004. After that it was all waste recycling, not scrap. The number of people who know how to extract and achieve a clean product are few and far between, but the scrap man inme had been that apprenticeship.”