Recycling specialist extends contracts with major crafts and healthcare players
Burton-based waste and recycling specialist Willshee’s has secured a pair of contract renewals with arts and crafts retail giant Hobbycraft and Brunel Healthcare, the UK’s leading manufacturer of vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements.
The two companies, which have both achieved zero waste to landfill by partnering with Willshee’s, employ hundreds of people across multiple sites, with 300 alone employed at Hobbycraft’s national distribution centre in Staffordshire. Both deal with “vast” amounts of packaging on a daily basis and generate large quantities of refuse.
Hobbycraft’s Anthony Oldfield, operations manager at the distribution centre, said: “Working with the Willshee’s team as our total waste management partner is bringing many benefits to our business. They take a very proactive approach which is refreshing as well as being hugely advantageous. Through their investments and industry relationships, Willshee’s has introduced better routes for recycling wood, hard plastics and glass which have reduced some of our costs.”
Swadlincote-based Brunel has reappointed Willshee’s to provide waste management solutions across all four of its sites.
Warehouse and services manager Colin Sturgess said: “We enjoy a really productive and rewarding partnership approach with the Willshee’s team. Despite working together for nearly a decade, the standard of account management is consistently excellent.
“We’re always looking at new ways to further improve our carbon footprint and environmental legacy and Willshee’s continue to re-evaluate our waste streams and look for new and innovative solutions. This really adds value. For example, some of our waste now goes to an anaerobic digestion plant rather than becoming Refuse Derived Fuel. Anaerobic digestion is higher up the waste hierarchy, recycling more and reducing our levels of general waste – which is good news for us, and good news for the environment.”
Willshee’s managing director Dean Willshee added: “We are delighted to have been reappointed by Hobbycraft and Brunel Healthcare. These prestigious contract renewals show that we really do deliver in terms of helping our customers to remove, reuse and recycle more, while often bringing savings at the same time.
“We are finding that many companies, like Hobbycraft and Brunel Healthcare, for whom zero waste to landfill is now the norm, want to keep increasing their levels of best practice when it comes to the environment, further reducing their carbon footprint wherever they possibly can. And there are many ways that we can help businesses to achieve this!”
