A GROWING environmental solutions firm near York, which supplied a baling machine to help Matalan, the superstore in Clifton Moor, experiment with recycling waste packaging, is now set to reap huge rewards.

Matalan has declared the Clifton Moor trial such a success that it has called on Mil-tek UK to supply balers to every one of its 176 UK stores.

The Easingwold franchise, Mil-tek (Central) Ltd, will now be responsible for supplying balers to Matalan throughout Yorkshire, Durham, Cumbria and the Lake District.

The precise details of the contract are not yet known, but it likely to bring a huge boost to the turnover of the company based at Easingwold Business Park, which last year stood at £800,000.

It also boosts the credentials of the eight employee firm for its entries in the 2004 Evening Press Business of the Year competition, both in the Environmental Business of the Year and Small Business of the Year categories.

Managing director of Mil-tek (Central) Ltd is Jon Earnshaw, who four years ago managed a company manufacturing piglet feed in Denmark. Disposal of its packaging waste was proving to be a big problem.

A 40 cubic yard skip cost nearly £1,000, 80 per cent of which was landfill tax.

Recycling companies there suggested that if the piglet feed mill could bale the waste, they would be happy to collect it free for recycling.

That is when Mr Earnshaw first discovered Mil-tek, which offered a baler for experimental use. The results were amazing, slashing costs to only £150 per month.

He bought two machines, one for cardboard, the other for plastic and payback took less than a year.

He returned to Britain, realising that costs in this country for landfill waste were escalating and would continue to rise - so he set up his own branch of Mil-tek at his home in Tadcaster using a warehouse in the town, and last September moved to Easingwold.

To date, UK Mil-tek has managed to take more than 300,000 tonnes of packaging waste and North Yorkshire organisations like Yorwaste have managed to recycle these materials. Most businesses which buy or lease his balers slash waste costs by up to 80 per cent and find payback on the machinery in at least a year.

Now he plans to employ six more people at Easingwold - another four sales staff and two service engineers.

Meanwhile, he has set up Mil-tek in New Zealand with his brother-in-law as managing director.

He said: "For a country that has a zero waste policy, it was inevitable that the business was destined to succeed."

Updated: 10:07 Tuesday, August 10, 2004