Posted on April - 22 - 2010
Mercury falls as profits dip for recycling business
The government and recycling schemes should do more to make businesses aware of the need to recycle flourescent lamp tubes, says the managing director of a Greater Manchester company which specialises in such work.
Bryan Neill, managing director of AIM-listed Mercury Recycling, was speaking after his company saw profits last year fall by over a third to £333,000 from £534,000.
The Trafford Park-based company also saw sales fall, by nine per cent across the year, to £2.79m, although it pointed out that this comes against a nationwide fall in sales among lamp manufacturers of 30 per cent.
Mr Neill said the company is already doing business with many large firms and has a sales team alerting small companies about the need to recycle.
But he felt the onus was on the government and the organisers of compliance schemes for recycling to raise awareness.
“There could be more done,” he said. “Some 200 million lights and tubes were bought in the UK in 2009, but only 30 million were recycled.”
The company is pinning more of its hopes on the government’s new battery directive. Introduced earlier year, this sets targets for the recycling of batteries, which is a new avenue of business for the company.
“Some 45,000 tonnes of batteries are sold in the UK each year,” said Mr Neill.
“But in 2009 only three per cent of these were recycled. The new targets are for compliance schemes, which anyone selling batteries has to join. They seek to increase battery recycling to 10 per cent by the end of this year, 25 per cent by 2012 and 65 per cent by 2016. We estimate this will result in total battery recycling increasing from around 1,000 tonnes this year to 30,000 tonnes by 2016.”
Trading in the early part of this year was also badly affected by the snow. Mr Neill said this had halted the company’s eight HGVs, which are usually continually on the road going to pick up items for recycling.
“But we have clawed back all the lost work since then,” he said.
A reduction in headcount from 40 to 36 also helped to offset the fall in sales over the year, he said. Shares fell five per cent, or 0.5p, to 9.5p.
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