Wellingborough home to advanced recycling plant
Veka Recycling has chosen Wellingborough for the location of what will be Europe’s most advanced facility dedicated to recycling PVCU window and door profiles, the company has announced.
The company has taken over a former metals recycling plant in Neilson Road on the Finedon Industrial Estate in the north east of the town and will spend more than £8 million to build a facility ready to accept and convert UK unused offcuts and old PVCU windows into reusable polymer.
The 5.5-acre Wellingborough plant will be the third such facility to be built by Veka Umwelttechnik, the specialist recycling subsidiary of the Veka Group, of which Veka Recycling is a wholly owned division.
The company opened its first plant in Behringen, Germany, in 1993. A further facility was opened in France in 2006.
The Wellingborough plant will enable Veka Recycling to fully reprocess PVCU window and door frames into material that can be manufactured as new products, including window profiles, cills and trims, and also a range of products as diverse as cable management and construction products.
Plans are for the plant to open initially this year, and to be fully operational from spring 2019, with up to 50 jobs expected to be created.
Rubber, metals and other impurities will all be separated from the PVCU, and the combined capacity of the three plants will exceed 100,000 tonnes of PVCU windows a year.
Veka Recycling’s managing director Tony Cattini said: “This is a real-world commitment by the Veka Group towards the UK, and recognition of the continued importance of the British market post-Brexit.”
Simon Scholes, commercial director, said: “We will have the ability to promote and deliver PVCU windows as truly sustainable at a time when plastic generally is under close scrutiny, and to make the most of what is a tremendous resource.
“But while other plastic products are coming under fire, the recycling of old windows in the UK is very advanced with most taken out of buildings being recycled into new products. The new plant allows us to take and reprocess even more and within the UK.”
