NEWS
OCTOBER 08
A teenage entrepreneur is filling Christmas stockings for free, the Pen Shop is opening a new luxury branch and, for Bill Ward, it really is the time to buy Volvo. See? It’s not all grim up North... >> Project escapes bank collapse One of the world’s biggest recycling operations will go ahead in the North East, despite its dependence on Lehman Brothers’ failed bank for its lead capital in the £50m investment. Brothers Michael and William Thompson and fellow director Richard Mair are erecting the world’s largest steam-driven recycling plant on the banks of the Tyne at Gateshead. Derwenthaugh EcoParc and its recycling plant, run by the Thompsons’ company Graphite Resources Ltd, will be a first of its type in the UK. Due to be running with 70 jobs towards the end of 2009, it will recycle an equivalent of waste from 500,000 homes at an unprecedented rate of more than 75%. News of the fall of Lehman Brothers’ investment bank in September, four months after the main contractor Clugston started building, raised speculation about whether the autoclave plant would be aborted. But a spokesman for Graphite Resources said: “While it may be the last project in the region that Lehman Brothers will invest in, its contribution has been paid in. The money has been transferred.” Steam autoclaving, which is already common in Australia and the USA, is used on a small scale here to sterilise equipment in some hospitals and surgeries. Under the process, steam is used to sterilise municipal and household waste in autoclaves – large, enclosed vessels the length of a fuel tanker, taking up to 30 tonnes of (black bag) waste for an hour at a time. In annual terms, the plant will treat up to 320,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste, 60,000 tonnes of light waste (kerbside, commercial and industrial) and 20,000 tonnes of green and skip waste. Through steam treatment, waste normally sent to landfill will no longer create carbon emissions caused by initial burning. Besides Lehman Brothers, the management
BUSINESS QUARTER | OCTOBER 08
team and a group led by Lord Baker, the former Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment, will finance it. Debt facilities are being provided by Allied Irish Bank and Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank. The Thompsons left their family’s building demolition firm Thompsons of Prudhoe in 2002 to plan the new project. Lord Baker, who is non-executive chairman, said: “The Thompsons are pioneers. The North East should be proud of leading the way to a more eco-friendly future.”
>> Figuring globally Durham Business School features in a new world listing of Masters in Finance degree programmes drawn up by the Financial Times. The school’s seven MSc finance programmes attract thousands of applicants. It has 331 students in the current academic year, the second largest cohort in Europe and the third largest globally.
>> Jonathan fills stockings Young entrepreneur Jonathan Grubin has launched a website to help parents choose their most wanted Christmas presents for their children for free. Jonathan, 17, of Gosforth, who attends Newcastle’s Royal Grammar School has introduced the service on FreeXmas.co.uk Items on offer include many on youngsters’ seasonal wish lists. Members need only complete sponsors’ offers and recommend friends to do the same. FreeXmas.co.uk is the newest of four online networks that A-level student Jonathan owns. He set up his first business, which gives away free mobile phone accessories, when he was 12.
>> Gathering bluebells Expanding Newcastle firm Bluebell Telecommunications has bought two business-to-business telecoms companies in Scotland and Yorkshire. Bluebell has now made four acquisitions in three years, the latest purchases coming through a war chest of £2m funding in partnership with NatWest and NEL Fund Managers Ltd. Annual revenue is expected to hit £3.5m, thanks in part to NEL’s official 500th fund injection since it was established in 1988.
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>> On your Marks Mark Anderson has joined Room501, creators of BQ magazine, as business development manager with special responsibility for growing the business in the region. Mark brings some 20 years’ commercial media experience with him, most recently as business development manager with ncjMedia, publisher of The Journal and the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle. Mark joins the experienced sales team which underpins BQ magazine, the North East Business Guide and Room501’s online businesses at a crucial stage of growth for Room501, a leading media and contract publishing group whose services also include design and web development.