Home Finance & Investments J&B Recycling opens Washington Site

J&B Recycling opens Washington Site

The North East’s largest independent recycling company has recently purchased its fourth site.

J&B Recycling has opened its new recycling centre at Monument Park, Pattinson Industrial Estate in Washington.

The facility services Sunderland City Council’s kerbside recycling contract amongst others and brings the opportunity to develop and grow further in the region.

J&B Recycling has opened its new recycling centre at Monument Park, Pattinson Industrial Estate in Washington.


Mark Penny, Commercial Manager at J&B, said: “The site holds the potential to act as a delivery point for other recycling contracts.

“It can open up the expansion of recycling collections from other kerbside contracts and nearby businesses in Tyne and Wear. Making them more efficient, saving on fuel and miles per tonne for the collection of recyclables.” The company, whose headquarters are based in Hartlepool, has two sites in the town along with a further site in Middlesbrough.

In 2018/19 J&B Recycling collected over 162,000 tonnes of commingled, commercial dry mixed recycling and industrial and construction, demolition waste throughout the North East.

The company, led by CEO Vikki Jackson-Smith, and was formerly a coal processing company run by Alan Jackson, before diverting the business into recycling under daughter Vikki’s leadership 20 years ago.

J&B’s processes commingled recyclables producing commodities for reprocessing and eventually recycled into new products. The company’s high-quality outputs include sorted card, corrugated cardboard, paper, plastic bottles, plastic films, aluminium cans, steel cans and glass from glass bottles and jars.

The company employs over 200 staff and focuses on improving efficiency by upgrading its existing sites across the North East and undertaking major capacity expansion and process optimisation projects. The company has recently reported 40% growth, on top of the audited previous year’s 100% growth.

Mark continued: “We have really been focusing on upgrading our plants to improve our efficiency to be able to produce more, whilst maintaining the quality of our outputs. Washington is our fourth site and means we now have a total of 20 acres of developed facilities across the North East.”

The new site has created jobs for two new employees at this new site and has seen one employee transferred over to Washington.