Member Article

Major Environmental Accolade for UKCM

Leading container repair and refurbishment company UK Container Maintenance (UKCM), is jubilant after being named as a Finalist in the National Sustainability Awards 2023.

UKCM was recognised in the Circular & Recycling category, in acknowledgement of the company’s significant contribution to the environment.

Over the past 25 years UKCM has repaired, refurbished and reused over 1.8 million waste containers for its customers, making a significant contribution to the circular economy, and also securing major cost savings for public and private sector organisations.

In the last 2 years, the firm has launched to market a series of new products and services to diversify its provision in supporting the circular economy, including maintenance and repairs for street furniture, litter bins, metal stillages, transit cages and bespoke metal pallets, carried out at the customer’s site or at UKCM’s state-of-the-art refurbishment facility.

Further developments for the company throughout the year include upweighted operational capability. UKCM expanded its fleet of rapid response vehicles and mobile engineers to meet increased demand for visits to client premises for container repair and refurbishment, to undertake any statutory testing and for the installation of UKCM Connect container tracking devices. The introduction of UKCM Connect responds to a direct industry need to move container management to the next level, offering services that not only increase the lifespan of a container but also help to maximise utilisation, enhance security, minimise transportation costs.

Emma Elston MBE, founder of UKCM comments: “At present, our economy is still largely linear, in that we dig things out of the ground, turn them into products that last from minutes to a few years, and then put them back into the ground as landfill. This obviously wastes resources and money while inherently harming the environment through both extraction and disposal.

“Our business is founded on supporting a circular economy – one which captures materials so that today’s stock is remanufactured or reused to become tomorrow’s stock, rather than landfill. The key to this is to understand how circular business models can be developed in a way that keeps companies profitable. However, when this logic is applied to waste containers, the answer lies not only in the vast cost-saving potential of unlocking the capital tied up in damaged units by restoring them to full working order, but also in converting and selling them.”

The National Sustainability Awards 2023 organisers state: “Although the awards are a celebration, they also serve to show how our society can, with good leadership, be lead through the post-pandemic recovery into a new and more sustainable path. The issues have not stood still, and neither have the solutions, but it is important that these ideas are seen and adopted. We are looking for the best in every category, from finance to renewables, from insulation to water conservation, all are important to ensure that future generations will be able to live in a cleaner, greener world.”

Established in 1998, UKCM, the UK’s largest family-owned container repair and refurbishment company is dedicated to the refurbishment of all types of waste and recycling containers. UKCM works across the country offering waste companies and local authorities’ mobile repairs, as well as factory-based services at its head office located in Winsford, Cheshire.

The process brings old, and often unwanted, waste containers back to life instead of them going to scrap. The business model – refurbishment over replacement - is simple and for a third of the price of replacing a container, UKCM can restore the unit to full working order.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Melissa Chawner .