Members of staff from the John Lawrie Group have been helping to strengthen the Aberdeen-based environmental services, metal reprocessing and steel trading company’s links with a city primary school.

Primary five pupils at Tullos Primary School have been working on an environmental project, and as part of their studies got the opportunity to learn about metal recycling on an industrial scale from the leading reprocessor and exporter of scrap metal in north and north-east Scotland.

After a short presentation at the school from Ray Grant, John Lawrie Group’s environmental director, the pupils headed to the firm’s metal recycling facility in Greenbank Road. There, the pupils got the chance to see the whole metal recycling process, from equipment arriving on a lorry and being weighed, to the end result as it prepares to be sent for reprocessing.

School Children

Pupils watched in amazement as the forklift truck that they were shown intact minutes earlier, returned from the large metal cutting machine, known as a shear, as a compact metal cube. Operations director Dave Weston was on hand to explain to the children how the shear works and the levels of pressure that it uses to crush and compact metal which goes into it.

Group managing director, Vic Sinclair, said: “I am really pleased that the John Lawrie Group is strengthening our links with Tullos Primary School. Everyone is being encouraged to reduce the amount of waste they produce and recycle more, so this has been a great opportunity to explain to the pupils about some of our work. It was interesting to see their reactions to some of the equipment that we recycle and how we go about it.”