A.W. Jenkinson holds a 50% stake in Midlands-based A&A Recycling Limited. Their activities are centred on the repair and re-marketing of pallets, chipping those damaged beyond repair for use in the panel board industry and as fuel for biomass power stations.
Today pallets are in constant demand, A&A plays a valuable role in improving supply and reducing the demand for the virgin hard wood required to make new pallets.
A&A Recycling’s activities are centred on the recycling of used pallets and other life-expired timber. The Company started life at Bentley, Warwickshire, in the early 1990’s, with a single flatbed truck collecting used pallets for reconditioning and resale in the Birmingham area.
Later, a valuable and growing market was identified for the recycling of other forms of waste wood, mirroring the activities of the wider A.W. Jenkinson group.
As a result of increased demand, a second site was opened at Packington in May 2008. This site, near Coleshill, West Midlands, returns unrecoverable wood and pallets to the supply chain.
Where possible, pallets collected from across the UK are repaired and resold. The remaining timber and other reclaimed wood goes on to be pulped for production of chip board and for use in modern carbon-neutral power stations.
Bentley currently processes around 1,500 tonnes of high grade recycled material every month, with Packington processing around 5,000 tonnes per month.
More recently, Animal Comfort Products, manufactured at the Bentley site from 'A' Grade recycled clean wood, have entered the A&A supply range, along with high grade baled natural animal bedding, produced from virgin forest wood.
A&A plays a valuable role in reducing the amount of virgin timber consumed for the manufacture of new pallets. The Company’s core activity is the refurbishment and return to the supply chain of otherwise life-expired pallets.
A&A collects damaged pallets from a wide variety of retail, processing and manufacturing businesses.
On arrival at the Packington or Bentley site, they are sorted to identify type (A&A Recycling can process a wide variety of pallet types and sizes) and potential for refurbishment.
Where the pallets are identified as being repairable, they are transferred to the Company’s purpose-designed repair sheds where they are reconditioned.
Good condition wood, from otherwise irreparable pallets, is normally broken out to be cannibalised as replacement pieces for those pallets that are in generally better condition.
Finally the renewed pallets are stacked by type ready for re-marketing to the Company’s numerous clients; used nails are sold-on for scrap and remaining wood enters the Company’s second product stream.
Once the renewal process has reclaimed all the valuable pallets, the remaining unrecoverable material enters the second A&A production stream.
In parallel with the activities of a number of associated A.W. Jenkinson sites, waste wood from locally sourced demolition, household and municipal sources is added to the large volume of redundant pallets and is processed through the onsite shredding facilities at Packington and Bentley.
Here they are shredded and screened into a number of different grades of material suitable for the panel board, livestock bedding and bio-fuel markets.