Tetley brews up waste savings

A Tetley tea factory has cut waste removal costs from one of its production halls by 20%, resulting in significant carbon savings.


Tata Global Beverage’s Eaglescliffe factory in Teeside, home to the Tetley brand, installed a waste compactor to process a mixture of waste tea bags, cardboard cartons, corrugated cardboard and plastic film.

Since installing the compactor, the company has cut the number of skip collections required from once a week to once or twice a month.

Tata’s manufacturing engineer, Mike Peacock, said: “Our housekeeping has also improved significantly because the mobile compactor is enclosed, whereas a standard waste skip is totally open.

“Waste materials – especially tea dust and light cardboard packaging – used to get blown out of the skip, creating cleanliness and housekeeping issues.”

He added: “We were reorganising our production facilities and, because we knew we would not get contamination into the production process with a self-contained compactor unit, we were able to remove the walls surrounding the compactor which was really helpful to us.”

The compactor was supplied by local firm Greenbank.

Maxine Perella

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