BUSINESS PROFILE
TWO DECADES OF RECYCLING BUSINESS GOING
FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
In Irvine, a business that was way ahead of its
time, is preparing to celebrate its twentieth
anniversary. As more and more businesses
are focusing on recycling waste and turning
it into usable materials, CCL (North) Ltd. has
built up two decades in the practice.
As Bruce McLean the owner and managing
director puts it: “We recycle electronic and
electrical equipment, everything from
supercomputers down to toasters, kettles and hi-
fi. Every item we recycle is equally important – no
matter its value, it needs to be dealt with properly.
It’s a very interesting and satisfying business.”
McLean who has been dealing with equipment
that individuals and businesses throw away does
see a rise in environmental concern being put
into practice. “I think the public are much more
aware of environmental issues globally, but many
are not aware of the solutions available locally
or are sceptical about what really happens to
their waste when they dispose of it. Businesses
are becoming much more aware because they
have to be. There is a lot of legislation in place
now which puts an emphasis on business to
dispose of their waste responsibly not only from
an environmental point of view but with regard
to data security.“
The WEEE Directive is the European Union
Directive for waste electrical and electronic
equipment, which became law, in the UK, in- McLean says: “At least a decade before the
directive was implemented, we knew that there
was a lot of value contained within electronic
equipment. My background in electronics design
gave me awareness of what materials were used
and by the late nineties I had started recycling
electronics while working at another company.
Initially, we had a lot of electronic manufacturing
companies in Scotland producing high volumes
of working products, we realised early on that
they also produced large volumes of scrap.
There was value in that scrap in being able to
recover microchips and precious metals from the
electronic assemblies.
“When we first began, we were mainly
supporting the manufacturers that were here
but over the years that has largely disappeared
because we no longer have the volume of
manufacturing in Scotland. So now we focus
on old, or ‘end of life’ equipment and we can still
salvage components from it or melt it down
for precious metals. In some cases, where we
have permission from our clients, we refurbish
equipment and remarket it. The technology has
obviously moved on a lot and we now have a
total emphasis on data destruction. We can do
this electronically using specialist software or we
offer secure shredding using our purpose built
shredders which can shred up to 3000 hard drives
per hour.”
McLean has built CCL North to a position
where it now has an annual turnover of £1.4m
and employs 34 people. In 2005, Bruce started
another business called Restructa Ltd, which is
also based in Irvine, about a mile away from CCL
North. It employs 45 people recycling around1500 televisions and computer monitors every
day. Bruce has seen a lot of changes in his
20 years in the business. “Recycling has gone
through so many different identities, the latest
one being the circular economy, and I’m sure
there will be other transformations in the future.
But ultimately, no matter how many times you
refurbish or reuse something, it will likely end up
with us, and what we do remains the same.
It is essential that we know what’s inside all
these different electronic items. Sure, there are
valuable materials and we have to be able to
identify those and know how best to recover
them but, even more importantly, we need to
understand where the hazardous parts are and
how to handle these materials and treat them
safely so that we do not harm the environment.”
“We bring in about 8,000 tonnes of material
per year. We try and use every single part and
when we have all of the parts we can use, we’ll
then have the remainder melted down to recover
precious metals like gold, silver, copper and
palladium.”
Bruce McLean says that the work of CCL North
is little known and celebrating their 20th year
will involve them “having a great time and trying
to create more awareness of what we do.” He
says: ”Both businesses feel very fortunate being
located in Ayrshire. We have built two fabulous
workforces. Every employee is valuable to us and
they have been hugely loyal, it’s testament to
them that we are celebrating 20 years in business.
Here’s to the next twenty!For more information on secure recycling and reuse of IT and WEEE equipment
visit cclnorth.comBruce McLean,
Managing Director CCL