Recycling firm expands with £1.5m investment

Derbyshire recycling firm Ward has completed a £1.5m investment in its metal processing facility in Ilkeston.

The firm has bought and installed a new shredder from Metso after experiencing a huge demand for its metal recycling service.

Donald Ward, operations director at Ward said: “Our metal recycling business has seen a big increase in demand in the last couple of years, particularly with exports from our deep-sea dock at Immingham, which meant we needed to invest in processing the increased tonnage more quickly and efficiently. With the new pre-shredder, we are now pre-processing vehicles before they go into the main shredder. This minimises risk from any explosions from gas bottles hidden in vehicles, as well as preventing damage to our core machinery, reducing down time and saving energy.”

As well as the investment in the new pre-shredder and associated groundworks, during 2019 Ward also purchased a number of new Liebherr material handlers and several Sennebogen cranes to process metals, moving them around sites and feeding the specialised machine. Across its Derbyshire and Immingham sites, Ward is now able to process and recycle close to half a million tonnes of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal of all grades for sale within the UK and to export overseas, per year.

The fourth generation family business has invested significantly over the last two years with a new purpose-built site at Chesterfield, a complete office renovation at Ilkeston of Donald Ward House, opening a dedicated deep sea dock at Immingham for further expansion of its metal recycling capabilities, plus launching a new textile recycling service WARDRobe. It also installed a new IT infrastructure which enabled the team to move its office functions to work from home during the period of lockdown.