Paragon rolls out label recycling service

The Lincolnshire food packaging and label supplier also plans to start building a new carbon-neutral facility in Boston by the end of this year.

Following a six-month pilot with seven customers of different sizes to evaluate performance criteria and to ensure that the firm could minimise its carbon footprint by offering the recycling service, Paragon is now offering it to customers, non-customers and label manufacturers across the UK. They will pay a handling charge of £70 per tonne.

Paragon Print and Packaging marketing manager Rick Smith said: "This is cheaper than having waste collected by local councils, especially as their landfill costs are going up, but our standard charge will remain the same."

The firm already has a dedicated recycling facility at its Spalding site, which handles 60% of the waste from its eight manufacturing sites. By using Paragon's existing transport infrastructure, the cost and associated carbon footprints for recycling would be minimised, said Smith.

Paragon has estimated that 50,000 tonnes of self-adhesive label waste is sent to landfill each year in the UK.

Businesses that use self-adhesive labels are left with the siliconised liner paper each time a label is applied. According to Paragon, this represents 30-40% of the total weight of a label product and accounts for around 30,000 tonnes of landfill each year.

Paragon will recycle and reprocess this waste into tissue paper and sweet wrappers.

Meanwhile, Smith said the site of the catastrophic fire that gutted Paragon's press hall at Benner Road, Spalding, on 3 April was in the process of being cleared.

"We don't yet know whether we'll redevelop or sell the site because we had already planned to build the carbon-neutral facility in Boston," he said.

The firm relocated 25 staff from Benner Road to its second facility in Spalding, plus factories in Wisbech, Boston and Thetford, where it has compatible presses. They will be relocated to the new premises when they are completed.

Data systems were unaffected and the firm's studio and administrative functions were relocated to two new premises in Spalding.

"We lost about 900 hours of work, which we had recouped in the first two weeks after the fire," said Smith.

He added that the fire, caused by an electrical fault, had been "very inconvenient" and had forced the firm to bring forward its expansion strategy by six months.

Paragon Labels was established in 1994 and now employs 875 people. It produces self-adhesive labels and fresh and chilled food packaging, including flexible films, food sleeves and cartons.

Turnover in 2006 was £103.4m.

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