Liberty Metal Recycling (LMR), has been launched by the Liberty House Group and is claimed to represent ‘a major step towards the achievement of its green steel vision to create a competitive and sustainable steel sector in the UK’
LMR intends to develop a network of advanced collection and processing facilities for ferrous and non-ferrous metals across the UK, USA and continental Europe. The new company will be led by two experienced and respected figures in the global metal recycling industry.
Tom Bird, previously of SIMS and Van Dalen, will head up the UK and US parts of the new enterprise while Matthijs de Jong, formerly with Euro Scrap, TSR Recycling and the Alba Group, will lead the mainland Europe operation.
According to Liberty, it is intended that the new international business will be free-standing and profitable in its own right. It will supply the Group’s fast-growing integrated steel business in the UK, which will be based increasingly on domestic scrap, melted in electric arc furnaces and powered by renewable energy.
LMR plans to set up a processing centre in Newport, South Wales, where the Group already operates a 1Mt/yr hot strip mill and where it aims to recommence liquid steel production in the near future from recycled scrap. The Group’s aim in the UK is to locate recycling centres in regions of high scrap metal generation and close to Liberty’s steel melting and rolling facilities. These regions are likely to include the South East, Midlands, North East and Scotland.
Liberty hopes that within five years the business will be recycling 5Mt/yr of metal in the UK alone.
Simultaneously, the company will develop its recycling business in the USA and in continental Europe where it has already opened a scrap collection and trans-shipment operation in Gdansk, Poland.
Tom Bird will be CEO of Liberty’s UK and US recycling business. Mr Bird has more than 30 years’ experience in the industry. Matthijs de Jong has held key positions in the metal recycling industry across the world over the past 20 years.
Liberty House executive chairman, Sanjeev Gupta, described the launch of LMR as: ‘a very significant step on the journey towards the delivery of our green steel vision.”
He added that the projected growth in the supply of scrap in the UK and in other developed economies over the coming years will provide the basis for a strong, competitive and sustainable steel industry for the future. “The fact that we have recruited two of the most prominent and accomplished individuals in the global metal recycling industry shows how serious we are in delivering on this vision, he said.”