Wood recycling company GI Hadfield & Son is investing heavily to diversify into a wider range of co-products markets.
The company says it will spend up to a further £400,000 at its 14-acre Manchester site where it has invested £4m in five years.
The investment has funded a move from supplying mainly panel producers, to making products such as animal bedding, woodchip compost and chips for biomass. Four years ago 99% of output went to the panel sector. Now it’s 40%.
In 2003 the company received funding from the Waste Resources Action programme (WRAP) to help it construct a processing plant to service alternative markets. WRAP also set a target for Hadfield to recycle a minimum of 71,000 tonnes of waste wood into alternative products in three years, which the firm is confident of reaching this year.
Business development manager Stuart Howarth said: “We want to raise recycling levels. A lot of people think wood recycling is a tinpot sector but it’s not, it is big business.”
Mr Howarth said recycled woodchip prices for the panelboard sector had dropped from about £35 a tonne 10 years ago to £18 today.
Hadfield’s latest spending is on “specialist plant and machinery”. It follows a £450,000 investment in new vehicles last year.
