WRAP Unveils New 'One Stop Shop' Business Support Service

“The recycling sector has some unique characteristics which require a distinctive approach to providing business support,” says Dr Bevis Watts, Head of Business Support at WRAP. “The new and improved services being offered by WRAP’s Business Support team are tailored to the needs of the recycling sector and designed to help companies realise their potential, so that recycling is economically, as well as environmentally, sustainable.”

To date, WRAP has succeeded in helping the recycling and reprocessing sector to achieve its current annual turnover of £1.2 billion and its activities - designed to accelerate sector growth - have led to an increase of 3.5 million tonnes in the levels of materials being reprocessed annually in the UK.

WRAP’s new ‘one-stop shop’ builds on this success by extending existing advisory services and financial schemes and introducing new support in key areas such as training, innovation and marketing. All the services will be delivered by WRAP’s Business Support team as part of the organisation’s Business Growth programme, which has a target to deliver 10% sustainable growth in the turnover of the specialist recycling and processing sector over the next two years.

The new support is structured to give recyclers improved access to business services, to raise awareness of the combinations of support schemes available through WRAP and to create a better understanding of complementary services available through other support organisations. All services fall into one of four key headings: Expertise, Management, Innovation and Investment.

Expertise services are designed to help recycling SMEs to expand or develop new operations and are delivered via WRAP’s Business Development Service. Two new offerings in this category are the provision of Marketing Strategy Development and Technical Support. The former offers SMEs guidance on marketing recycled products and consultancy support up to the value of £10k for the development of a market assessment, sales and marketing strategy, promotional or sales plan, or specific marketing communications advice. Technical Support offers advice and consultancy support up to the value of £20k and may cover issues such as products testing and certification, specifying feedstocks or equipment requirements and optimising process efficiency. These two new services build on the successful track record established by other ongoing ‘Expertise’ activities, such as business planning assistance to help with raising finance, a service that has already secured nearly £7m for 15 different recycling businesses in recent years.

The Management category or WRAP’s Business Support addresses the short and longer term management requirements of the recycling and reprocessing sector. It includes the Interim Manager Scheme, which funds recruitment of a highly skilled executive on a short term basis to fast-track the development of a particular area of the business, and the brand new Funding for Training Scheme that offers funding for senior executive training to encourage the development of management skills.

Innovation services are designed to support new recycling concepts. New in this category is The Commercialisation Centre for individuals or companies who have an early stage innovative idea, technology or product related to recycling and who need support in bringing that innovation to market. Established in April 2006, the Centre is funded by WRAP and operated by Imperial Innovations Ltd, one of the UK’s leading business development and technology transfer companies. Also in this category is WRAP’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Scheme, designed to help a business identify what potential Intellectual Property it may have, and then protect it through patent, trade mark, copyright, registered design or licence.

The Investment section includes WRAP’s new Capital Grant Funding, which is organised as a series of competitions aiming to make a real step-change in the recycling of the particular material or activity being targeted. Individual competitions for Wood, Tyres and Organics were launched in May 2006, with Plastics and Plasterboard to follow in July and August respectively. ‘Investment’ also includes WRAP’s existing asset and equity finance schemes, including The Recycling Fund, a venture capital fund focused on the recycling sector, and the highly successful eQuip RVG scheme, which guarantees the future residual value of recycling equipment and has completed 160 transactions totalling over £8m to date. Eligibility of this scheme has just been extended to include larger recycling companies as well as SMEs and the recycling of tyres, plasterboard and batteries.

WRAP business support services are open to all recycling and reprocessing business, whether existing or start-up ventures, involved in one of WRAP’s focus materials or activity areas:

• aggregates, glass, plastics, organics, paper, wood, tyres, plasterboard, batteries, WEEE and ELV; and
• construction, manufacturing and retail.

The Business Support team has just completed a series of four regional roadshows to explain the extended range of services and more events are planned for the Autumn.

For more information, including the dates of the free regional roadshows, visit www.wrap.org.uk or contact the WRAP freephone helpline on 0808 100 2040.