Identifying over £4,000 in potential savings
It can sometimes seem that recycling is a relatively new trend in Britain. And it would be fair to say that businesses and households around the country are being encouraged to pay attention to their waste more than ever before. But the team at Ward Recycling Ltd have been working hard to promote the importance of effective and environmentally sound waste management since 2002.
Find out how we helped this internationally respected business to crush overheads and squeeze more value out of its utilities.
Ward Recycling Ltd (WRL) was established in February 2002, managing a paper collection scheme for several Teesside councils. As the business’s reputation grew, WRL moved beyond the North East into co-mingled material collections in a number of regions of Britain.
It was in 2012, however, that the business really hit its stride. With the opening of its Glass Beneficiation Plant and latterly its state-of-the-art Materials Recycling Facility, WRL developed the capacity to handle an incredible 70,000 tonnes of household dry mixed recyclables per year. Today, WRL has sites around the country and caters for everything from fibre sorting (paper recovery) to kerbside co-mingled recycling collections. With more than 150 employees around the UK, the organisation has proven itself to be a great success story.
But with rapid growth comes opportunities to improve efficiency. For this reason, Ward Recycling Ltd instructed The Energy Check to audit its energy consumption and identify areas of improvement across the business’s utilities.
Ward Recycling Procurement savings totalling £20,590
Like many large organisations spread across multiple premises, Ward Recycling’s energy contracts are more complicated than your average office bills. Upon close inspection of the business’s contracts and using our channels to negotiate favourable rates, we have been able to help WRL to save over £20,000 per year against their existing contracts.
kVA savings totalling £4,600
The demands of waste management and industrial processes can require substantial energy usage each day. However, that total usage can hide a number of potential efficiency savings. Having scrutinised Ward Recycling’s energy usage closely it became clear that the business was overpaying for electricity through excess capacity charges – measured in kVA. By reducing site capacity, we were immediately able to identify over £4,000 in savings.
£18,000 in tax rebates and future exemptions confirmed
Understanding the complexities of taxation and levies on utilities is one of the most crucial aspects of the work we do at The Energy Check. As a recycling and paper recovery business we were able to identify that Ward Recycling had been unwittingly paying a tax known as the Climate Change Levy – or CCL – which the company was exempt from due to the nature of its work. As a result, we have now claimed £18,000 in rebates for the business and negotiated a 92% exemption from CCL under the current contract.