Wales to host Europe's largest mobile recycling plant

How green are the Valleys?

Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 10 Sep 2007

Europe's largest mobile phone recycling plant is to open in Wales in November.

The £15m plant will take in used phones from the European Union and refurbish them before shipping them off for resale overseas.

It is hoped that the facility, run by Excel Holdings and former NTL boss Mike Bandeira, will eventually process 500,000 phones a month.

"Europe currently contributes around 125 million phones a year to a growing stockpile of unused goods, so the need to convert them into reusable stock has become increasingly urgent," said Bandeira.

"We want to ensure that these handsets, which represent an extremely important and valuable resource for hundreds of thousands of people around the world in developing countries, are not wasted or discarded in landfill.

"Mobile phones can be a lifeline to some people, where there is no alternative communications access."

The 120,000 sq ft facility will employ 150 workers who will refurbish the handsets and carefully wipe any stored data. They will then be sold in China, India, Pakistan, Dubai and Bolivia at 60 per cent of the cost of a new phone.

An advertising campaign will encourage people to send in their old handsets for recycling and there will be offers of payment depending on the condition of the phones. This will either be for cash, or the money can be donated to a list of charities.

"The service will have a significant impact on the way mobiles are reused and reintroduced to the market, and we also hope to help bring about a behavioural change among consumers regarding the reuse of handsets," Bandeira added.

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