At the RWM exhibition this year, we didn’t just spend our time talking to potential new clients. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some of our long-standing customers too. One such visitor to our stand was Mark Cruttenden, founder and director of pipe protection specialist Norkram. As part of the company’s commitment to the environmentally responsible supply of products to the oil and gas industry, this Peterhead-based business also offers a related recycling service. When used/reject protectors are returned to Norkram from offshore rigs, they can be processed to strip them back to their composite form – high density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic and steel. This is no mean feat of course. They must be rigorously washed, guillotined and quartered, to liberate the materials. The steel is sold to scrap merchants, before an UNTHA LRK1000 shredder gets to work shredding the plastic waste down to 25mm shreds. A granulator then completes the process by achieving an even finer 12mm chip size, before the HDPE is sold back into the plastics industry as 500kg bags of raw material. This circular system is certainly impressive, and it’s great to learn that one of our shredders is a crucial piece in the closed loop jigsaw. But what is even better to hear is that, in 10 years of operating this machine, Norkram has not experienced any problems whatsoever. Mark Cruttenden explains: “This HDPE shredder is the best I’ve seen. We’ve not had a single mechanical issue or breakdown, it never goes wrong. It’s amazing.” The story becomes even more interesting when UNTHA UK’s managing director Chris Oldfield advises that this very machine was supplied to Norkram all those years ago as a refurbished shredder. What’s more, it was the first LRK1000 UNTHA ever built! Chris comments: “In today’s modern, somewhat throwaway society, there unfortunately aren’t many things that are truly built to last. However, our shredding technology is, by design, engineered to deliver long term ROIs, as the Norkram project proves. It’s great to hear of such stories.” Are you a long-standing UNTHA customer, and would you like to share your shredding story with us? If so, please email Katie.Mallinson@untha.co.uk or call 0845 450 5388 to tell us more. For more information about Norkram, please visit www.norkram.co.uk.