Veka picks Wellingborough to build advanced window recycling plant

VEKA Recycling Ltd, a division of one of the world’s biggest PVC-U window profile manufacturers has chosen Wellingborough for the location of what will be Europe’s most advanced facility dedicated to recycling PVC-U window and door profiles. The company has taken over a former metals recycling plant in Neilson Road on the Finedon Industrial Estate in the north east of the town and will spend more than £8 million to create build a facility ready to accept and convert UK unused offcuts and old PVC-U windows into re-usable polymer. The 5.5 acre Wellingborough plant will be the third such facility to be built by VEKA Umwelttechnik GmbH, the specialist recycling subsidiary of the VEKA AG Group, of which VEKA Recycling Ltd is a wholly owned division. The company has pioneered PVC-U recycling in Europe with its first plant opening in Behringen, Germany as long ago as 1993.  A further facility was opened in France in 2006.

The latest, the Wellingborough plant, will enable VEKA Recycling Ltd to fully re-process PVC-U window and door frames into material that can be re-manufactured as new products including window profiles, cills and trims and also a range of products as diverse as cable management and construction products. Plans are for the plant to open initially this year and to be fully operational from spring 2019, with up to 50 jobs expected to be created. Rubber, metals and other impurities will all be separated from the PVC-U to enable re-manufacture as part of the most sophisticated process of its type installed anywhere in Europe. The combined capacity of the three plants will exceed 100,000 tonnes of PVC-U windows a year.

Speaking for VEKA Recycling Ltd the company’s Managing Director, Tony Cattini said: “This is a real-world commitment by the VEKA Group towards the UK and recognition of the continued importance of the British market post-Brexit.” Simon Scholes, Commercial Director added: “The Neilson Road site will be substantially re-developed and equipped from scratch to take advantage of the latest recycling technologies. This will give us the ability to produce the highest quality polymer for use in a range of construction products, including brand new window and doorframe profiles. We will have the ability to promote and deliver PVC-U windows as truly sustainable at a time when plastic generally is under close scrutiny, and to make the most of what is a tremendous resource. But whilst other plastic products are coming under fire, the recycling of old windows in the UK is very advanced with most taken out of buildings being recycled into new products. The new plant allows us to take and reprocess even more and within the UK.”