Fresh Start Waste Services have come a long way since being established back in 2005.
The last 3 years has seen the number of vehicles in our fleet double, staff numbers increase by 60% and revenues treble. A real good news story for the family run business who’s Directors were all born and brought up in Salford and Greater Manchester.
Fresh Start’s journey has been one of mile stones, such as the opening of our second Materials Recovery Facility, based in Preston. In April we were proud to reopen the old Smurfit Kappa recycling centre. This 1 acre site presented us an opportunity to deliver waste management services to Blackpool, Preston, Blackburn, Burnley and surrounding areas. We were also pleased to be able to recruit locally, re-employing a number of key personnel who were made redundant when Smurfit Kappa vacated the site.
This fantastic growth opportunity allowed us to expand our ‘Green Chef’ waste food collection service, benefiting many restaurants, hotels and leisure facilities across Lancashire. By introducing a number of POD wagons, we have the flexibility to collect multiple waste streams in separate chambers on the same vehicle. This flexibility saw Fresh Start introduce waste collection services for glass waste, cardboard, paper and residual waste, which is directed for waste to energy
Managing Director of Fresh Start, Craig Lavelle explained: “I have 35 years in the waste services industry and still share enormous passion to expand the business.”
“There is huge demand for our services and we’re creating further capacity to deal with new and existing contracts and extending our geographical reach across the county. The operational benefits for our customer’s in collecting glass waste or food waste, alongside residual waste or mixed recycling, are terrific, not to mention the green credentials of only running a single vehicle instead of two.”
Most recently, a planned expansion and change of use to our Swinton facility has been approved by Salford City Council, allowing the facility to increase its recovery and recycling capacity by around 33% from 15,000 tonnes to 20,000 tonnes per year across the 12,000 sq ft site. This is fantastic news, as we’re committed to recycling as much as possible.
The Pendlebury site now has the capacity to operate 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday, and 4am – 6pm on weekends. The extended operating hours will help ready for reuse significant quantities of glass waste, cardboard, paper, plastic and divert increased amounts of food waste for energy production. We estimate that we’ve recycled and diverted from landfill 50,000 tonnes of waste over the last 12 months.
As well as continuing to expand our operating facilities, we have planned for future growth by increasing our operators licence by 40%, allowing us to run 30 heavy goods vehicles. As a forward thinking company, it’s great that we’re always prepared to deal with planned growth, but just as importantly, growth that is not planned.
Transport Manager, Emma Lavelle said:
“Having the increased capacity is great news for the business and our customers. As a business that has still only been trading for 10 years, it’s important that we plan for next 10 and the 10 after that. The appetite to be the best we can be, and deliver the best service we can, shows no signs of diminishing. Fresh Start is a fantastic company to work for and one that constantly looks for day to day improvements every day.”
