Atlantic Recycling Ltd has been fined £40,000 for contravening a condition of its environmental permit for its waste site in Cardiff.
Natural Resources Wales (NRW) brought the prosecution after inspections revealed the company’s failure to manage operations in line with its own Fire Prevention and Mitigation Plan.
NRW said the offence increased the risk of fire at the site, which stores highly combustible Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) and had previously experienced serious fires in 2014 and 2015.
The company continued to accept additional waste in July 2019, despite agreeing with NRW to stop, and failed to maintain the required quarantine area to manage fire risk.
How was Atlantic Recycling involved in a Welsh political scandal?
In 2024, then Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething was embroiled in controversy after it emerged that Atlantic Recycling had donated £200,000 to his campaign.
Atlantic Recycling is owned by David John Neal, 65, who received a three-month suspended sentence in 2013 after a recycling firm he owned illegally disposed of waste in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
Neal was also fined £10,000, and two of his firms were ordered to pay fines and costs of £202,000 after he pleaded guilty at Cardiff Magistrates Court.
In 2017, Neal admitted to not complying an order to remove the waste and was handed a suspended 18-week prison sentence, as well as fines and costs of £230,000.
In March 2024, Atlantic Recycling was fined £300,000 after a father-of-two was killed by a shovel loader. Anthony Bilton was killed on 4 September 2019 when he was run over from behind by a Volvo shovel loader at the firm’s Atlantic Ecopark site in Cardiff.
The HSE investigation found that although a risk assessment had been produced before the work commenced, it was ‘not suitable nor sufficient’.
Gething faced calls to return the £200,000 donation, and it was one of the factors that led to him resigning as First Minister after only four months in office.
Judge says Atlantic Recycling could have caused serious environmental consequences
At the sentencing hearing, the court fined Atlantic Recycling £40,000 and ordered the company to pay £28,000 in costs to NRW. A victim surcharge is yet to be decided.
The sentencing judge, Her Honour Judge Celia Hughes, said: “The company ran a risk of causing serious environmental consequences by cutting corners, by ignoring its own Fire Prevention and Mitigation Plan and the requirements set out by NRW, even when it was warned about its behaviour.”
“It is fortunate that nothing more serious arose from those breaches, and I am told that the company has now taken more steps to comply with its enormous responsibility to run a safe and environmentally sensitive business on Welsh land.”
