Leake’s groundbreaking recycling initiative

John Murphy takes a closer look at how Sam Shire made local history

FOR 20 years Englishman Graham Leake had been a regular fishing visitor to the picturesque heritage town of Lismore.

Now he is very much an integral part of the industrial life of the West Waterford region where he set up his own recycling company which has made spectacular progress in less than five years in business.

Sam Shire Recycling Ltd. began operations in a small premises at Ballyrafter on the outskirts of Lismore in January 1998 with just five employees. Today the plant is operating out of a much larger IDA owned property at Mayfield on the other side of town with a workforce of twenty eight.

Having forged an historic link with Waterford County Council as a result of that body’s groundbreaking recycling initiative introduced last November, Graham Leake is ultra confident about the future. He has expansion plans in the pipeline that will also result in the creation of still further employment at his thriving plant.

A highly successful businessman in the UK where he has had his own pallets and packaging business for twenty years, Graham’s regular fishing trips to Lismore, allied it has to be said with a razor sharp business acumen, convinced him that there was a niche in the local market for a similar type venture.

“Having given it a fair modicum of thought and consideration I decided to give it a go’’, he says.

Thus Sam Shire Recycling Ltd. was born in old and disused mills at Ballyrafter.

Initially the company exclusively engaged in recycling pallets which were then shipped to England, but as the business prospered and developed the search was on for bigger and more suitable premises.

The IDA’s unoccupied property at Mayfield was identified, and in November 2000 the company moved to its new home where it has been the case of “all systems go’’ ever since.

The singular most important break for Sam Shire however came in April of last year when Waterford County Council extended an invitation to tender for the processing of dry household recyclables including cans, plastic, and cardboard. The company jumped at the opportunity, succeeded in securing the contract, and a new and successful public and private partnership was soon in place.

Waterford County Council became the first Council nationwide to introduce a major recycling initiative which commenced last November, and Sam Shire is the first private company to forge such a partnership with a local authority.

“It has worked a treat for both parties’”, says Graham Leake. “We couldn’t possibly forge a more successful and co-operative partnership and I can only see us going from strength to strength in the future’’.

That’s a view shared by the Council’s director of services at its Planning and Environment Dept., Denis McCarthy.

“Our link up with Sam Shire Recycling Ltd. has proven to be a huge success and we hope that it will continue for a very long time to come’’, said Mr. McCarthy.

Both men are also appreciative of the level of support given to the venture by the general public. “Their supportive participation in the recycling programme has been all important’’, says Graham Leake.

Part of the company’s extended business now involves the recycling of clothes and textiles, and they are also emptying bottle banks throughout the county and taking them to the Lismore plant for recycling.

“There they are segregated and baled and then shipped to the UK and are sold on as far as China’’, he said.

Food and drink cans are also separated in Lismore, but because there is little or no outlet for tin cans in Ireland now because of the collapsed situation at the former Irish Steel production plant they too are shipped to Britain.

“Glass bottles are also processed by us and shipped to the UK to be made into sandpaper and the like’’, the Sam Shire MD said.

In recent times too the company has concluded negotiations with Roadstone for a major order to put crushed glass into a Waterford County Council road construction project on a trial basis.

“That is very encouraging’’, says Graham Leake, “and if it proves to be the success we believe it will be then another new and significant opportunity will have opened up for us’’.

A further planned expansion starting next month will be the collection of bottles from pubs and hotels which the Sam Shire boss insists will be “another revolutionary service’’. The company is also looking to extend its service into South Tipperary.