COMPANY HISTORY
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The scrap merchants who started G&P Batteries sold it to Auto Recycling Group in 1996, and the new management saw an opportunity in moving into buying and selling waste lead acid batteries.
Two things shaped the future of the business as soon as it changed hands, says Michael Green: compliance in the form of Special Waste Regulations arrived in 1996 followed by Hazardous Waste Regulations in 2005, and the falling values of lead.
'The value of lead started to fall, and continued to fall, until we ran out of room so we thought we would have to change things," he says.
Between 1998 and 1999, it morphed from trading waste lead acid batteries to collecting them. As automotive and industrial batteries became a problem waste, Green says, the company decided to provide an Innovative service for all waste batteries.
"It widened the scope, and today we still do that, anyone with waste batteries in the country, we can collect and dispose of them," he says.
In 2005 Eco-Bat Technologies, a smelting operation and lead producer, bought G&P Batteries out of the Auto Recycling Group, a decision made easy for Eco-Bat considering G&P was its biggest supplier in the UK.
The business grew, more than doubling the vehicle fleet to 18 by 2005, and increasing As workforce from 50 to 70 people, where it is today. `We aren't the cheapest, but customers get absolute certainty that everything is complied with, and you still hear of people getting caught for not having orange [hazchern] plates, or not having the right site licence, or not doing the consignment notes correctly, we just won't contemplate cutting corners. And still today there is no-one who does what we do. Our competition is still scrap merchants and other general waste collectors," he says.