Wood recycling plants receive big funding boost

Waste wood will be given a new lease of life instead of rotting in landfill thanks to two recycling projects being funded by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP).


As part of the projects, money from WRAP’s Regional Market Development Fund will allow more leftover wood from pallet packaging, civic amenity, construction jobs and demolition sites will all be recycled and reused by plants in the UK.

A company from the north west of England, Plevin & Sons Ltd, has received £395,000 in funding, which it will use to install a new plant with a processing capacity of around 40 tonnes of recycled wood each hour.

Wood from local authority sites will be screened, cleaned and then used to produce woodchip. This can then be used by the chipboard industry, as well as for other purposes such as animal bedding, equestrian riding surfaces and garden mulching.

A further £106,000 will be donated to another company in the west Midlands, West Bromwich Pallets, to help build a second production line and a decontamination plant for wood fibre products.

Between them, the two plants should be recycling around 235,000 tonnes of wood waste by the end of 2006, according to WRAP’s special projects manager, Mervyn Jones.

“Studies have suggested that there are huge volumes of wood still being sent to landfill,” Mr Jones said. “We recognise that regional and local delivery of support to recycling businesses is an integral part of market development.”

“The challenge is to strengthen the English regional footprint for market development, and so we’re delighted to award the funding to these two companies in these regions.”

The Regional Market Development Fund was launched last year and will provide up to £10 million for regional and local projects in the UK that will secure the recycling of additional tonnage derived from priority waste streams, including wood.

By Jane Kettle

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