Wood recycling specialist R Plevin & Sons is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and the time is flying past ever more quickly.
With a new E.ON biomass energy plant to feed, a biomass export contract to fulfil and plans for its own combined heat and power plant on the near horizon, it’s no wonder the company hasn’t yet had time to consider how to celebrate its birthday.
Roy and Maureen Plevin set up the business in 1973 with little more than one truck and a lot of ambition. They processed wood co-products and supplied the animal bedding sector and the major chipboard manufacturers in the UK.
About 18 years ago Plevin outgrew its first site in Hyde and moved to the seven-acre site at Mossley, Greater Manchester where its headquarters are still based. Once here, capacity was boosted by investment in two fully-automated processing lines and business really started to fly.
By now the Plevins’ sons, Simon and Jamie, had both become an integral part of the family business and by the early 2000s they were looking for further growth opportunities. But by his own admission, managing director Jamie Plevin didn’t expect expansion to be quite so dramatic.
"Between 2002-2005 we quadrupled in size and went from a single site to a multi-site operation with 100 employees. Looking back I don’t know how we did it!
"We were supplying a lot of our poultry bedding products in Lincolnshire and Norfolk and wanted a production facility near there," said Mr Plevin. "We bought a failing waste wood business at Elkesley in Nottinghamshire and invested £3-4m on a fully-automated baling line for equestrian and poultry bedding products."
Inevitably growth led to more growth. The investments in production at Elkesley resulted in spare capacity and this slack was taken up when Plevin acquired animal bedding specialist Woodpecker in 2005. A few months later the latter’s main competitor, Snowflake, came onto the market too and, although the timing wasn’t perfect, it was simply too good an opportunity to miss.
The Snowflake operation gave Plevin depots at Bristol and Boston and, again, the company invested £3m in new plant and equipment to boost production. The Boston plant gained a new wood pelleting plant for cat litter and biomass and an automated hay and straw processing line. The company also added an automated line for pet packs at the Elkesley depot because it had started to supply the large supermarkets and pet superstores with wood-based animal bedding products.
In 2009 control of the business was passed to the Plevins’ sons, with Simon as transport director, co-ordinating the rapidly growing haulage operation, and Jamie as MD.
Impact of recession
The pinch in both the demand from the chipboard sector for product and the supply from mills for the animal bedding side of the business came in the early days of recession.
"Whenever we’ve invested we’ve always put plant in that will increase our capacity and that’s resulted in a greater demand for raw material," said Mr Plevin. "Since 2008 the supply of animal bedding raw material has been challenging because it derives predominantly from sawdust and shavings from sawmilling [which has declined during the recession].
"Volumes into the chipboard industry started to drop as early as April 2008 and the situation hasn’t significantly improved since."
It focused the Plevins’ minds on a sector they had been keen to expand into but had delayed due to the Snowflake acquisition and its associated investment programme.
"The chipboard sector isn’t interested in low grade waste wood and sheet materials and there is a lot of that around. This is where the biomass side of our business comes to the fore," said Mr Plevin, adding that the company has contracts with local authorities, national and regional waste companies, and skip hire companies, to name but a few.
The company’s biomass ambitions were boosted in 2010 – although not announced until 2011 – when it secured the exclusive, 25-year contract to supply wood fuel to E.ON’s new £120m wood energy plant at Blackburn Meadows in Sheffield. The 30MW power plant, which is under construction, will start commissioning in the first quarter of 2014 and will have capacity for up to 200,000 tonnes of wood fuel per year.
Doubling production volumes
As Plevin currently processes in excess of 200,000 tonnes of co-products and waste wood annually, this represents a doubling of production volumes but the company isn’t achieving this in one giant leap, nor will it rob Peter to pay Paul.
"It will all be additional growth and won’t displace our existing operations at all," said Mr Plevin, adding that the chipboard and animal bedding industries will remain integral parts of the business.
"We aim to double our volumes through the business by the end of 2015. We have been ramping them up in preparation for supplying E.ON but because there isn’t enough demand in the UK for wood waste biomass material yet we’ve secured an export contract with a wood energy plant in Sweden."
This development called for a further £750,000 of investment at the Elkesley plant where the material is processed. "It’s stored at the quayside at Grimsby before shipping and we had to ensure it was free from fines material. We invested in crushing equipment to produce chips from 10-100mm, in additional ferrous and nonferrous separation equipment and in significant screening capabilities so that we can remove all the sub-10mm particles," said Mr Plevin.
The 18-month export contract kicked in last September and Plevin now ships 2,000 tonnes of product once or twice a month. The export quantities for the contract are pitched at 50,000 tonnes and the company hopes to continue this even when demand from E.ON starts.
"It’s another string to our bow and, if the raw material availability and the finances stack up, then we’ll continue to export beyond 2014," said Mr Plevin.
To support this extra production and the huge volumes of raw and finished material that will come on stream with the E.ON business, Plevin is on the brink of securing a 50-acre "super-site" in the Sheffield area. "It will be our largest wood processing and storage site and all our other sites will become arteries feeding into it. We’re looking to invest £2-3m on new processing plant and equipment straight away and it will be operational for the start of the E.ON contract."
And with the new site, Mr Plevin said he wants to hear from any merchants, from small independents to national chains, who have waste wood of any grade to dispose of.
"We can offer long-term cost-effective disposal routes and guaranteed open gate policies to contracted customers," he said.
Even more significant investment – to the tune of £18m – is on the cards at Plevin’s Elkesley site where a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, plus drying and roundwood flaking facilities is planned.
The high-grade sawdust, shavings and solid offcuts necessary for the animal bedding sector are sourced from the sawmilling operations of businesses such as Travis Perkins, Saint- Gobain and Metsä Wood and are derived from kiln-dried, imported material.
"We don’t currently source raw material from the big home-grown primary processors in the UK because their co-products typically have a moisture content of 50-60% and it has to be around 10% to be suitable for processing and storage as animal bedding," said Mr Plevin.
"With our own CHP plant we’ll be able to dry this material so we’ll be able to source from the home-grown sector. We’ll be looking for 100,000 tonnes of home-grown material a year and that will be a combination of sawdust and co-products and small roundwood.
"If we can flake roundwood we can also reduce our dependence on sawmills for sawdust and shavings," he said, adding that this latter point was particularly attractive given the impact the construction downturn has had on sawmills’ activities.
The CHP plant will generate 1.8MW of electricity and 8MW of heat and will be powered solely by Plevin’s own supplies of waste wood. "We’ll be offsetting about 20,000 tonnes of carbon a year and it will make the Elkesley site self-sufficient in heat and electricity, plus there will be excess electricity we can export to the grid," said Mr Plevin.
The development has been through a protracted and somewhat painful planning process but with an Environment Agency permit already in place and the promise of 16 new jobs, plus some apprenticeships, the company is hopeful it will get the go-ahead from Nottinghamshire County Council around June.
"Then we’ll get the funding in place, work on the equipment specification and negotiate contracts for the supply of small roundwood and home-grown co-products and we would hope to have the plant operational within 18 months."
He added that, with the CHP plant in place, Plevin’s current £20m turnover could be boosted to £50m over the next five years.
Recruitment drive
Plevin’s rapid expansion into different product sectors has resulted in the company embarking on a major recruitment programme.
"We’re recruiting a full section of senior and middle management to help us be fit for purpose for where we want to be in the future," said Mr Plevin. "Over the last 18 months we’ve recruited nine key managers from varying disciplines, with the focus being on strengthening our supply chain, fleet performance and support functions. Key roles have included a business development manager, a supply chain manager, a purchasing manager, a fleet manager and also a training manager for our 50 drivers who are on a continuing improvement programme."
The drivers are critical to the company’s success, he added. "They know all our collection points and understand our suppliers’ schedules. We’re in control of our supply chain from collection to manufacturing to redistribution and that allows us to be competitive in what is a very cost sensitive market. It’s why we’ve managed to do so well."
