OKAY Engineering seeks carbon neutrality with £1.3m Lloyds investment
Recycling equipment manufacturer OKAY Engineering has unveiled plans to become “fully carbon neutral” within 10 years, after a £1.3 million investment from Llloyds Bank.
Thanks to £187,000 of funding from Lloyds Bank, the £9million turnover business has installed 425 solar panels on its factory roof.
The 200MWh system now provides two thirds of the company’s energy demand, reducing energy bills by £1m over the panels’ 25-year lifetime. The new measures will also save 40 tonnes of CO2 production each year, the equivalent of planting 1,728 trees.
The solar panels have been funded via Lloyds Bank’s Clean Growth Financing Initiative, which provides customers with access to discounted lending for green purposes.
Earlier in the year, Lloyds Bank also invested £1.14million to help OKAY purchase three acres of brownfield land behind its current factory.
The plan is to use one acre of the adjacent site to build a second factory to “serve demand from the rapidly growing recycling industry”. The remaining two acres is earmarked for a solar farm so the company can become entirely energy self-sufficient, as well as create a second income stream selling its surplus renewable energy.
Antonia Kay, managing director of OKAY Engineering, said: “We have big investment plans that will ultimately help drive the UK’s recycling figures to where they need to be. We’re grateful to have Lloyds Bank by our side as a trusted partner to support us with our long-term strategy.”
Ipswich HWRC redevelopment completed ahead of schedule
FCC’s Foxhall Recycling Centre in Ipswich is now fully open to all customers as construction works have been “completed ahead of schedule”.
Work on the project began in October 2022 and was originally anticipated for completion in early 2024. The site remained open throughout the build, but service was reduced for business and trade customers and there were temporary restrictions on some waste types while space was limited.
The new site, designed by Concertus Design and Property Consultants and built by RG Carter, increases capacity for vehicles on site, improves access from Foxhall Road and reduces queuing on the highway.
It also has a new raised level construction, giving better access to containers for users without the need for stairs.
Improvements have also been made to the site’s Re-use shop, which sells furniture, sports equipment, kitchen supplies, books, toys and bric-a-brac collected at Suffolk’s recycling centres and which would otherwise have been disposed of as waste.
Cllr Kay Yule, East Suffolk council’s cabinet member for planning and coastal management, said: “East Suffolk council can charge developers when new housing is built in the district and these contributions, known as Community Infrastructure Levy, can then be put towards improvements to local infrastructure for the benefit of the community. We are pleased to have been able to support these essential improvements at the recycling centre with over £950,000 collected through developer contributions.”
Veolia’s Sustainability fund donates over £94,000
Veolia has announced that its ‘Sustainability Fund’ is supporting over 120 grassroots projects “chosen for their exemplary contribution to their local communities and environments”.
The company said its fund, launched in 2021, has supported over 260 projects with over £200,000 in three years.
Partnering with a further four Local Authorities this year, bringing the total to 25 across the country, Veolia said it was “able to identify more projects than ever before in areas where they provide recycling, waste and cleansing services to the community”.
Some of the highlights chosen by Veolia are:
- Hammersmith & Fulham’s Nourish Hub – Scrap and Pickle Course: is run by a community kitchen. Funding will help them run a cookery course that teaches people how to pickle, ferment and preserve foods to learn creative ways to love your leftovers and end food waste
- Hampshire’s Chineham Repair Cafe will help local residents to truly Reduce, Reuse, Repair and Recycle. Volunteers run these Repair Cafes, amongst many others across the country receiving funding this year, saving valuable items and materials from the bin and teaching residents useful skills
- Brunswick Playground In Southwark is going from grey to green with a dedicated group of parents and volunteers who will use the funding to build green walls around We want to create the perimeter of the school playground, encouraging biodiversity, offering shade and catching air pollution.
SAFI raises $19.5 million during funding round
A business-to-business marketplace for recyclables training has announced that it has raised $19.5 million (£15.49 million) from a funding round.
Safi operates a global marketplace for trading dry recyclables, which it says is underpinned “by a unique AI enhanced material quality control system and embedded financing programme”
In addition, Safi have announced the appointments of the former vice president of Smurfit Kappa, Henri Vermueulen, as board advisor, and the full time appointments of experienced industry traders Renny Craib and Dan Willits to the Safi team.
Rishi Stocker, chief executive of Safi, said:“Recyclables trading represents a rapidly growing $290bn market, yet the market is still essential an analogue one where the quality of materials is largely subjective and lacks data and accessibility.
“The UK government has recently published its Simpler Recycling programme which surprised many people with its retention of the comingling system. We support this, but it absolutely must be backed up by improvements in quality and transparency. In a nutshell, this means proving to global markets and regulators that the materials produced are high quality commodities with applications in any market across the globe. We also believe we need to seamlessly integrate the financial side of global trading by introducing embedded finance into the system.”
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