VIDEO REPORT: In an exclusive interview with letsrecycle.com Kevin Bradshaw, chief executive of Viridor, highlights how the whole sector has been challenged by the pandemic; cites Viridor’s focus on infrastructure investment, and reveals that its Avonmouth plastics facility will be one of the largest of its type in Europe.
Kevin Bradshaw joined Viridor last autumn “in the middle of the pandemic and all its challenges”. His appointment came in the wake of KKR Partners acquiring Viridor from the Pennon Group; and he describes KKR as a “terrific shareholder to have”.
Pandemic
Describing some of the impact of the pandemic on the business, he said: “The pandemic clearly presents really significant challenges both economically for us as a business but also most importantly for our colleagues and for Viridor our health and safety of colleagues is rightly absolutely paramount.”
Mr Bradshaw continued: “Our Covid measures have been very well researched and very well applied with real discipline – restrictions around travel, social distancing, hygiene regimes, enhanced cleaning and air disinfecting technology have been deployed across the sites. We employ lateral flow testing regularly now… and our real focus is around the team’s mental health and wellbeing and I am acutely aware of the impact the pandemic has had on everyone.”
Review
In terms of the business direction, Mr Bradshaw confirmed that a review of Viridor is underway. He noted that: “The focus for us is absolutely around finding infrastructure investments, both in the energy from waste business but also the polymer markets in particular where we can back those investments with long term contracts.
“Ideally we as a team are focused on maximising the value out of our existing assets but we are also looking to the future and the opportunity to deploy more capital in building out the fleets both in terms of energy from waste and recycling.”
Energy from waste
On energy from waste, the Viridor chief executive declared: “I think there is a significant gap today in the market, obviously with regional variations. I think the UK can accommodate perhaps 10 more plants at really reasonable scale before the market begins to come into balance. Aspiration at Viridor is to build, design, finance and operate as many of these as we can.”
Mr Bradshaw explained that energy from waste avoided landfill and its climate impacts. It could also, he said, provide a route to net zero and potentially net negative emissions in the future through the application of new technologies, such as carbon capture.
Polymers reprocessing is ‘a core area of focus for us’
In terms of new energy from waste facilities, he said there would be more to come from Viridor. Two facilities proposed by the company are at Overwood Farm, South Lanarkshire and at Ford, Sussex with partner Grundon.
Polymers
On the recycling front, he remarked that polymer reprocessing is “a core area of focus for us; the plant is on the same site as the ERF in Avonmouth and will be one of the largest plants in Europe for HDPE and PET processing – we’re really excited about that and looking to other investments.”
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Source: letsrecycle.com Plastic
