One of Europe’s biggest smoked salmon producers has found that it pays to recycle after installing a new Greenbank compactor.
Since acquiring the machine in February 2010 to compress its polystyrene waste, Farne Salmon and Trout, which is located in the Scottish Borders, has processed in excess of 45,000 fish boxes.
But whereas the company previously had to pay for its used polystyrene fish boxes to be collected, it can now sell the compacted blocks produced by its Greenbank equipment.
The new revenue stream generated by the sale of the compacted EPS is currently being used to offset the purchase of the specialist machine – something that Farne had carefully budgeted for in advance – but the machine also has environmental benefits.
Since it was set up in 1982 with a staff of six, Farne has grown to become the biggest private employer in the Borders with a core workforce of 450 people. It prides itself as being one of the most efficient producers of smoked salmon in the UK, possibly Europe.
Martin Smith, Farne’s projects, site services and environmental manager, said that extending its efficiency to the way waste was being managed was originally the main aim of acquiring a compactor.
“We had reviewed our recycling strategy as part of our environmental management ISO 14001 process and identified that if we brought the processing of the boxes in which our raw fish arrives here onsite, we could generate a revenue stream,” he explained.
The company approached Greenbank as part of a tendering process while looking for a supplier for the new compactor. This involved putting machines from different companies through their paces at Farne’s premises.
Smith said a number of factors led to Greenbank’s machine, a Cobalt SC3000, being selected.
“We compared each compactor on price, service and machine performance and it came out as the best,” he added.
“The technical solution offered by Greenbank also impressed us when they were able to adapt the machine to exactly meet our needs.”
Robin Evershed, sales director of Greenbank, said it was great news to be chosen over two other suppliers.
“When it became apparent that the machine on trial wasn’t achieving the throughput Farne ideally needed we were able to customise the machine to make it even faster, increasing capacity by 35%," he said.
“Providing a custom service is something we are proud to be able to offer all our customers but what is especially pleasing about the Farne contract win is that our British made machine was judged to have outperformed one made in the Far East.”
