Kevin Bond, Somerlap’s Managing Director, explains that “Like many companies, Yeo Valley accumulates wooden pallets that are unsuitable for shipping finished products to their customers - they just clutter up their sites and become a real nuisance. We now buy and collect these unwanted pallets and take them back to our nearby recycling facility in Mark.”

Those in a salvageable state are repaired and restored to their original condition, then sold on. All those that are irretrievably damaged go to Somerlap’s newly installed £130,000 chipper where they are shredded, at a rate of over 300 pallets an hour, into fragments for use as fuel, ground cover and chipboard.

Yeo Valley are delighted - the unwanted pallets, previously a major nuisance, are now turned into a valuable source of revenue. The cost of disposal is entirely removed and, equally important, the company can protect its environmental credentials by demonstrating that it operates a sustainable recycling process.

Yeo Valley’s Director of Communications, Graham Keating, comments that “As an organic farming and dairy processing business, twice winners of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development, Yeo Valley has always taken its responsibilities to the environment very seriously. We apply the mantra of “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” to all of our operations, so this project with Somerlap fits very neatly with our ethos.”

“Damaged pallets,” he continues, “were previously treated as an operational nuisance. Now they are repaired for re-use or are recycled through an auditable chain. Somerlap’s close proximity to our main distribution warehouse in Highbridge also means that minimal road transport is involved. Finally, at a time when companies must look to minimise their operational costs, the revenue gain of over £30,000 per year is a very welcome benefit.”

More info:
www.somerlap.co.uk