Thousands of tonnes of recycling stuck at Wingfield as SKM Recycling shuts down in Victoria
More than 380 shipping containers full of recycling are sitting at Wingfield industrial depot. Is its next stop landfill?
The future of hundreds of shipping containers at Wingfield filled with recycling remains uncertain with the impending financial collapse of a Victorian recycling company.
Creditors have taken court action to wind up SKM Recycling, which last week closed its Melbourne operations after being served with environmental protection orders.
The EPA served an enforcement notice on SKM earlier this year, ordering it to remove 387 shipping containers from the Wingfield site by June.
“There are still 381 shipping containers at SKM Recycling’s Wingfield depot,” said a spokeswoman.
“As the stockpile is stored inside shipping containers, it currently represents a low environmental risk in terms of fire, odour and vermin etc.”
The spokesperson said the EPA was monitoring the situation.
“The next steps for the enforcement of the environment protection order will depend what happens to SKM Recycling,” she said.
With the company’s future as yet undecided, it would not be appropriate to comment on the future of the stockpile at this stage.”
Industry observers said the material inside the shipping containers was most likely to end up in landfills.
EPA officers have been monitoring the waste stockpile since November 2017, when the company agreed to move all material under cover and to remove the shipping containers.
Various Adelaide councils were selling their yellow bin material to SKM before the China National Sword crisis hit last year, leaving the company without an overseas market.
Much of the paper, cardboard and plastic it was going to send to China was being stored in shipping containers at an industrial depot on Francis Rd, Wingfield.
The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has confirmed hundreds of shipping containers remain in a stockpile at Wingfield, with their fate uncertain.
The closure of SKM has created chaos in Victoria, with five out of 30 councils saying they will have to send recycling to landfills.
With SKM on the verge of being placed in receivership, they said the company would not be in a financial position to move the containers.
Creditors sought to wind up the company last week in the Victorian Supreme Court arguing it was insolvent.
A logistics company, Tasman, claims the company owes $3.35 million while five other companies say they are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The matter was adjourned to give SKM more time to repay its debts.
The company already has warned that as much as 400,000 tonnes a year could go to landfill if it goes out of business, while 600 staff would lose their jobs.
SKM told several Adelaide councils last June that it could no longer accept their yellow bin material because of the China National Sword crisis.
The announcement left councils having to urgently find alternative processing plants to stop the recycling going to landfill.
A seven-council consortium, East Waste, responded by terminating its contracts with SKM.
East Waste temporarily moved to a recycling plant operated by three northern councils at Edinburgh.
Others including Onkaparinga, Holdfast Bay and Marion had to negotiate market-term conditions with Adelaide’s only other recycling processor, privately-owned Visy.
Only limited resources are available within SA to process the large quantity of recycling material stockpiled by SKM at Wingfield.
The northern recycling facility is now running at capacity after signing a contract with East Waste to keep processing its yellow bin material.
This only leaves Visy, which is predominantly interested in processing cardboard and paper for its pulp mills, not the plastic and glass also at Wingfield.
SKM has been contacted for comment.