Waste firm to spend £4m on revamped HQ

The company, based at Swales Moor in Boothtown, Halifax, and with operations across the UK, has submitted plans to Calderdale Council which it says will transform the 17-acre site.

The proposals include a major upgrade of the existing pet food plant, new buildings for housing animal carcasses and its waste transfer operations, a new staff canteen, an office block extension, a new food storage building and an extension to the woodchip area.

The company employs about 300 staff across the group. The quantity of waste it handles and recycles each year is more than enough to cover Wembley Stadium three times over.

Managing director Danny Sawrij said: "We are the only company in the UK that has the capability and expertise to handle and recycle so many different forms of waste products.

"One hundred per cent of the food waste we take is reused in one form or another, including turning it into significant quantities of fuel to meet the country's ever growing energy needs.

"This sizeable investment in Swales Moor is part of our long-term strategy to play a major role in the country's renewable energy market, helping the Government achieve its green energy targets.

"What we do at our operations around the country massively reduces the burden on landfill sites.

"For each of the different categories of waste we handle we can find another use for it."

A liaison group made up of local residents, councillors and council officers, has been given a full tour of the site and informed of the plans to improve and upgrade the facilities.

The group was formed earlier this year in a bid to improve community relations after protests about odours in the area from the company's Omega Proteins firm, which is based off Thornton Road in Bradford.

Residents of Boothtown in Halifax and Queensbury in Bradford said they were fed up of foul smells, noise and spillages from its lorries as they make their way to the rendering plant.

Leo Group is the parent company of a number of individual firms. It specialises in the collection and processing of animal by-products into meal, oils and pet food ingredients which it supplies throughout the world.

The company, which was founded by Mr Sawrij in the 1970s, also recycles industrial and commercial waste through its own transfer station.

Earlier this year residents in the West Yorkshire villages of Thornton, Queensbury, Denholme, Boothtown and as far afield as Gargrave in North Yorkshire were protesting about plans to double the number of lorries going in and out of an animal waste processing plant at Omega Proteins.

The company is appealing against Bradford Council's refusal to grant it permission to allow 60 lorries a day in and out of the plant, which is double the total currently permitted.

A spokesman for Omega Proteins said: "The public inquiry is reviewing the permitted hours and number of vehicles movements to and from Omega Proteins.

"A significant consequence of the current restrictions means that wagons are redirected to Swalesmoor, until they are permitted to enter Omega at Thornton, which creates double handling of lorry loads and unnecessary journeys through Queensbury.

"A successful outcome for both the residents and Leo Group would be a lifting of the restrictions on the hours of operation and numbers of HGVs allowed to enter Erlings Works each day which would reduce vehicle movements through Queensbury."

TURNING RUBBISH INTO USEFUL PRODUCTS

Companies in Leo Group:

Omega Proteins in Halifax is an animal waste processing plant, which creates meal for power generation and to fuel cement works

Alba Transport in Halifax collects and delivers products from all the Leo Group companies

Envirowaste Services in Halifax collects and recycles domestic and commercial waste from sites in Bradford and Halifax

The Big Green Timber Co in Halifax specialises in breaking down and chipping wood so that it can be used to create new materials, such as MDF.

Alba Proteins in Penrith renders poultry and non poultry to produce meals and oils for use primarily in the petfood, oleo chemical and power industries

Alba Proteins in Dumfries, Scotland, supplies petfood manufacturers in the UK and Europe with pet food ingredients

Robinson Mitchell in Ingleton, Lancashire, collects and disposes of animal carcasses