“Lease to Buy” scheme drives down packhouse waste costs

LM Porter, a family-run food packhouse set on a 400 acre farm with 80 acres of fresh fruit including raspberries and strawberries, as well as cereals and potatoes, has achieved significant cost savings by using a small free-standing, self-contained DURApac machine supplied by Compact and Bale to compact all of its non-food packaging waste.

The company produces more than 2,500 tonnes of food for major supermarkets a year, a by-product of which is a large amount of packaging waste including punnets, trays and rolls of sticky labels backing tape.

Until July 2004 LM Porter had been filling skips with its unrecyclable loose waste and emptying them every three days. Now it uses the DURApac and has been impressed with results to date. “It’s user-friendly and environmentally friendly,” said David Warden, farm manager at LM Porter. “I saw an advert for Compact and Bale, phoned them up and they ran through my requirements and recommended this particular compactor all over the phone. Because it’s on a lease to buy scheme we’ve been able to try it out and it’s a very cost effective way of doing it too.”

Although the punnets demanded by LM Porter’s retail customers are difficult to recycle, Warden hopes that the manufacturers will soon some up with a material, which will allow easier recycling of packaging waste. “We’re obviously very aware of the Landfill Directives and hope it won’t be too long before we can recycle our punnets instead of taking them to landfill,” said Warden. “But now we can compact our waste we only make a deposit to the landfill site once every 2-3 weeks rather than every three days. At £90 per skip means we are saving a considerable amount of money each month and a substantial sum over the year.”

To contact Compact and Bale call 01732 835 555 or email info@compact-and-bale.com.