A Swansea recycling firm has secured a £2m loan to build a major new sorting plant that it says will transform how much waste it can process.
Griffiths Waste Management, part of the family-owned Gavin Griffiths Group, has been backed by the Development Bank of Wales’ Green Business Loan Scheme.
The money will help fund a new Materials Recycling Facility at the company’s base in Llangyfelach, north of Swansea.
The firm currently handles between 25,000 and 30,000 tonnes of waste a year, but says its existing facility has reached the limit of what it can take.
The company says the new plant will lift that capacity to as much as 200,000 tonnes a year.
It will use automated sorting technology designed to recover more recyclable material, cut contamination and reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.
The firm says the investment will safeguard 41 existing jobs and create new skilled roles.
Construction is said to be nearing completion, with the plant expected to be fully operational during 2026.
The £2m loan is part of a wider multi-million-pound investment in the project, which also draws on the group’s own funds and a Welsh Government grant.
Griffiths Waste Management, established in 2010, provides waste, recycling, transport and aggregates services to councils, households and businesses across Wales and beyond.
Gavin Griffiths, managing director of the Gavin Griffiths Group, said the investment reflected a long-term commitment to sustainability and the circular economy.
“We recognised some time ago that the future of waste management lies in recovering more materials, reducing landfill and producing higher-quality recycled products that can be reused within industry,” he said.
“This new facility will allow us to do exactly that.”
He said the Development Bank had taken the time to understand both the business and the wider environmental benefits of the project, giving the firm a platform to safeguard jobs and grow.
Sally Phillips, an investment executive at the Development Bank of Wales, said the project delivered both economic and environmental benefits.
She said it would increase recycling capacity, cut reliance on landfill and safeguard skilled jobs, adding that it was “exactly the type of project the Green Business Loan Scheme was designed to support”.
The company says technical assessment by the Carbon Trust concluded the project could deliver lifetime carbon savings of more than 53,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
The Green Business Loan Scheme, funded by the Welsh Government and the Development Bank of Wales, offers lower-interest loans to firms carrying out energy efficiency and decarbonisation projects.
It is the latest in a string of Development Bank investments across the region, which has recently backed new ventures from a Swansea city centre café to a Neath delicatessen.
