£2m funding package to develop Shropshire mattress recycler

A Shropshire recycling plant has received a £2m finance package, as it continues to divert one million mattresses away from landfill each year.

Paragon Bank had provided the funding to Textek which disposes of 12.5% of all mattresses in the UK annually.

Mattresses that would otherwise be going to landfill are stripped and all parts are recycled, including steel springs, fillings and fabric covers. In a landfill, a mattress takes around 100 years to decompose.

The initial deal was worth £1.9m and funded the recycling plant with two additional instalments totally £250,000 were provided through the Government-backed Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS).

The more recent instalments financed a fire suppression system to meet new health and safety regulations and an improved dust extraction system for staff welfare.

Steven Birch, director of Textek, said: “The Textek recycling plant provides a genuine answer to resolve the growing issue of large waste ending up in landfill.

“The development and design of the plant was incredibly complex, and it was important for me to get a funder on board that was able to provide a simple funding solution despite the scale of the project.”

It is estimated that more than eight million mattresses are disposed of each year in the UK. Of that number, at least six million are still going to landfill, amounting to more than 200,000 tonnes.

The recycling line was designed following 18 months of research and development around how to enable the successful separation of the flock from the steel, ensuring that the entirety of the mattress can be recycled or recovered. The plant is now able to process a mattress in around 30 seconds.

New legislation is being called for that will prevent mattresses and bulky items from going to landfill.