Re-Gen Waste Ltd. invests in Newry plant in Northern Ireland

Pictured above: Joseph Doherty, managing director of Re-Gen Waste Ltd.

Re-Gen Waste Ltd., headquartered in Newry, Northern Ireland, has made a £2 million ($2.7 million) investment in its Newry plant with another £7 million ($9.5 million) to be spent within three years, according to the company.

The company’s first expansion will be of its paper recycling lines. Thirty new jobs will be created during the construction phase of the expansion, and 12 full-time positions will be created to support the recovery of recycled paper, Re-Gen says, taking the total workforce up to 205.

This new investment will enable the company to significantly increase paper exports so it can continue to serve customers across the world, according to the company.

Re-Gen Managing Director Joseph Doherty says, “The completion of the project is hugely significant on a number of fronts. Firstly, as an ambitious company with innovation at the core of everything we do, we are making a statement of intent about our commitment to our employees and aspirations for the future. The plant upgrade will enable us to achieve a much-improved performance giving us a far stronger and more competitive position in the global paper market."

He continues, “We learned from the World Trade Organization that the Chinese government intended to ban certain grades of paper, which we were supplying to their top three mills. In order to meet this challenge rapidly, we pumped £2 million into our R&D department to help us install optical sorting, ballistic separators and a range of eddy currents and steel magnets, which will allow us to offer China and other markets the higher grades of paper they are now demanding.”

Doherty says Ren-Gen’s in-house R&D department, which includes a stand-alone engineering and fabrication team (logistics and plant), enables the company to make new machinery and operational efficiencies to respond to market demands.

“Additionally,” he says, “we have sourced new customers in Europe, specifically Germany and Turkey, who will take all grades of recovered paper.”

Re-Gen says it will generate turnover in excess of £28 million ($37.9 million) in 2017, with operations including waste to energy, mixed dry recycling processing, municipal solid waste processing and engineering.

“We have significant plans for the continued growth and evolution of our business with a clear strategy to target local contracts and expansion in the U.K. and European markets,” Doherty adds.