News round-up 10/11

Tata Steel completes £25m upgrade at Port Talbot

Tata Steel has completed a major upgrade of the hot strip Mill at its Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales, above, enabling it to further improve the quality of its steel products used in a wide range of markets, including automotive, engineering, construction and domestic appliances.

The upgrade was focused on the installation of a new £25m ‘reversing rougher’ – a key part of the process which transforms a nine-inch thick slab of steel into sheet less than an inch thick.

Press Release

Sterecycle fined £500,000

Sterecycle, has been found guilty of corporate manslaughter and fined £500,000, after an employee died at one of the company’s sites.

Michael Whinfrey, 42, was killed in January 2011 after a pressure vessel in an incinerator exploded at the Rotherham-based plant.

CIWM Journal

New job for Potočnik

Former European commissioner for the environment Janez Potočnik has become co-chair of the International Resource Panel (IRP), an authoritative scientific forum for scientists and experts working in the area of natural resource management.

Potočnik succeeds resource efficiency expert Professor Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker.

The IRP was launched by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Press release

Rochester’s plastics recycling facilty opened

Viridor’s chief executive Ian McAulay, below right, welcomed the Mayor of Medway Barry Kemp to the company’s new plastics recycling facility (PRF) in Rochester for the official opening.

The £12.5m PRF was built in conjunction with Stadler UK and has been in development since May 2014.

McAulay said: Facilities like Rochester reflect our programme of investment in the social infrastructure the UK needs for more recycling and energy recovery. I thank everyone for their hard work in delivering this excellent project.”

Press Release