Giant mobile recycling plant for Wales

Europe’s largest mobile phone recycling plant is to open in Wales this November.
Once it is fully operational, the 125,000 square foot plant will be processing around 500,000 handsets a month from the EU. These will be refreshed and then resold in countries such as China, India and Bolivia for 60 per cent of the original price. Mike Bandeira, former head of NTL, along with Excel Holdings, will be running the plant.
“Europe currently contributes 125 million phones a year to a growing stockpile of unused goods” says Bandeira, “so the need to convert them into reusable stock has become increasingly important. These handsets also represent an extremely important and valuable resource for hundreds of thousands of people in the developing world and we want to make sure that they are not wasted in landfill.” An advertising campaign will be launched to encourage phone users to send in their handsets for recycling. Cash payments will be offered for certain models, which can be paid to the owner or a selected charity.

'