40 jobs to be created as part of waste management company’s £15m expansion
Associated Waste Management (AWM) is opening a 200,000 sq ft materials recovery facility in Leeds as part of a £15m expansion plan which will create 40 jobs.
Valley Farm Road (VFR) in Stourton will open next month after AWM’s engineering partner Eggersmann from Germany supplied and installed the new plant, in which AWM has invested a total of £10m, with an additional £5m in recycling equipment and £2.5m in the latest collection vehicles for both trade and skip waste.
The depot was purchased in July 2016 and plans include the refurbishment of the site over the first four-year term of the 20-year lease.
Cllr Judith Blake, leader of Leeds City Council, said: “We very much welcome AWM’s continued commitment to Leeds and it is great news that through this latest significant investment, a further 40 jobs will be created in the city.”
AWM has a turnover of £48m and employs in excess of 270 full time staff. The company was founded more than 20 years ago and has its headquarters on Gelderd Road in Leeds, less than three miles from the new site, and operates from a number of strategic locations in West and North Yorkshire.
Tim Shapcott, commercial director, AWM, said: “The Stourton facility acquisition is the result of a number of significant contract awards for AWM over the past 24 months, culminating in the need for greater levels of innovation and processing capacity. It is a key element of our continued expansion plans, so we are very pleased that it has been successfully completed.”
AWM buys, processes and recycles all grades of paper, plastic, metals, wood, textiles, bricks and rubble, glass, food and organic fractions, using any non-recyclable items for energy recovery. In 2015, the company ranked in the top 10 exporters of energy from waste, producing 180,000 tonnes of refuse derived fuel which supplied combined heat and power plants both in the UK and Europe.
