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Case Study: Sterecycle
Published: January 2012
L-R Tom Shields, Sterecycle CEO, Ash Chopra, Finance Yorkshire Investment Director, Alistair Shotliff, Sterecycle Development Director, Richard Moulson, Sterecycle CFO, James Crankshaw, Sterecycle Director of Engineering, Alex McWhirter, Finance Yorkshire CEO.
L-R Tom Shields, Sterecycle CEO, Ash Chopra, Finance Yorkshire Investment Director, Alex McWhirter, Finance Yorkshire CEO, Alistair Shotliff, Sterecycle Development Director, James Crankshaw, Sterecycle Director of Engineering, Richard Moulson, Sterecycle CFO.
The Company
Sterecycle, based on Sheffield Road, Rotherham, is a waste treatment business focused on processing and recycling mixed household and trade waste.
Using its patented autoclave technology, Sterecycle is currently able to recover and recycle 65 percent of household waste that would normally go to landfill. Sterecycle has been in operation in Rotherham since June 2008 and has proven the technology on a commercial scale.
The Challenge
Sterecycle needed to increase capacity in order to cope with increasing quantities of household and trade waste. The successful Rotherham site is to be used as a blueprint for a future roll out of waste processing sites around the country. The company is also investigating the potential to generate energy from the organic portion of the waste that has been processed at the site.
The Solution
Sterecycle received a £1.25 million investment from the Finance Yorkshire Equity Fund. The company secured the finance as part of a total funding package of £5.1 million.
The finance will enable the company to expand its waste processing capacity at the South Yorkshire plant from 100 kilotonnes per annum (ktpa) to 175ktpa, and create a further 17 full time jobs.
The Investment Rationale
Tom Shields, CEO of Sterecycle, said: “Our technology is quick to approve, fast to build, has low capital costs and has a small carbon footprint. We plan to roll out our plants at a series of sites across the UK.”
Ash Chopra, who led the investment on behalf of the Finance Yorkshire Equity Fund, said: “The desire to find alternatives to simply sending waste to landfill is high on the political and environmental agendas. Land-filling waste is not a viable long-term option with regulatory driven penalties pushing the cost of landfill up. The technology in use at the company provides a viable “greener” alternative to landfill.
“We are delighted with this investment as further full-time jobs will be created and the company has raised additional finance as other investors followed our lead.”
Advising the Finance Yorkshire Equity Fund on the deal were Debbie Jackson and Joy Irving from Walker Morris, Leeds.
Future Expectations
The investment from Finance Yorkshire will go towards the purchase and installation of new autoclave equipment which has been manufactured in Sheffield by Mayflower Engineering and the further expansion of Sterecycle’s Rotherham plant.
It will provide added capacity for the municipal, commercial and industrial waste producers in the Yorkshire region, enabling more of the region’s waste to be recycled and reused instead of going to landfill.
- Sterecycle (Acrobat .pdf 3.2MB)
