Looking at operations today, what keeps you up at night and what excites you most about where A&A is headed?
What keeps me up is generally the things outside of our control typically, such as regulation, plant outages etc. In terms of what excites me most is the opportunities that both A&A and the wider A.W. Jenkinson Group has ahead.
Given the increasing demand for renewable energy sources, how does A&A leverage waste wood for biomass energy production, and what innovations are being explored to enhance this process?
A&A focuses on securing our inbound volumes, managing our sites to ensure we have winter secured as we are a seasonal market, then ensure we have the full wrap around for end users of biomass fuel to ensure no single point of failure. In terms of innovation, we must be able to offer any requirement to the inward supplier – Recycling, Recovery, Specific Transport Needs etc. We have gone to a number of lengths to ensure this is the case but namely offering any solution said supplier requires which has meant significant investment in our Recycling offering.
With the UK’s waste and recycling regulations constantly evolving, how do you foresee changes in policy impacting waste wood and how are you preparing?
We are working closely with the Wood Recyclers Association (WRA) to ensure we support the most workable means of progress for our industry and get prepared by speaking with key stakeholders in the relevant fields of change such as EA, NRW, SEPA, DESNZ, DEFRA etc.
Which stage of the waste hierarchy (a theme featured in your RWM panel discussion) offers the greatest untapped potential for reducing wood waste impact?
The Recycling market remains a challenge in the current economic market and has some headroom for growth but the biggest potential remains the Recovery sector with the arrival of the Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), as well as plants which may chose a whole blend of waste fuels going forward as opposed to mixed cleaner fuels.
If the wood recycling sector could undergo one transformational change in the next 5 years, whether technological, regulatory or cultural, what would it be, and why would it matter?
Without doubt regulatory. We need to create a market whereby we can manage the seasonality of our industry through a more workable solution with the regulator to ensure the right grades of waste wood end up in the right destinations in the UK. Currently, we are so bogged down with regulation and point scoring on sites we fail to win the overall aim in “Recycling or Recovery” to prevent landfill and carbon emissions. Currently the industry is failing on this and driving waste wood in the wrong direction through over regulation.
Looking ahead, what’s your vision for the future of waste wood recycling in the UK, and how do you see A&A Recycling Services leading that change?
My vision for wood recycling in the UK is for us to balance our domestic demand through better relations with the regulator to capture domestically arising waste wood in to homes in line with the waste hierarchy. We are going to see a big transition when facilities with ROC’s come to an end in the coming years which we hope will commercially reset the industry to ensure waste wood Recycling and Recovery can remain financially and operationally viable.