Phone recycling site set to ring up turnover hike for Greener Solutions

Published on Monday 2 November 2009 21:06

A SCOTS entrepreneur who set up a mobile phone recycling business in 2001 will next week launch an online subsidiary which is expected to increase turnover sevenfold in a year.

Colin Armstrong-Bell, from Ayrshire, a former Lehman Brothers banker, will launch Zonzoo with a nationwide print and TV advertising campaign.

The website, where mobile users can value their unwanted handsets, is forecast to push turnover at parent company Greener Solutions Group from 14 million last year to 100m over the next 12-18 months.

Greener Solutions already offers mobile phone recycling through a series of well-known high-street brands, including Tesco Mobile, but Zonzoo will provide one central website for consumers. It has already launched in Spain and Germany and will be rolled out in a further nine countries after the UK launch next week.

Armstrong-Bell, 40, said there was a huge opportunity for profit in mobile phone recycling after the European Union introduced the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive, which dictates that electronic items should no longer be thrown into landfill sites.

Although the law was introduced in the early part of this decade, Armstrong-Bell said the mobile phone recycling industry remains in its infancy, particularly in countries such as Spain, where Greener Solutions currently has no competitors.

The company resells phones in good working order to emerging markets, such as Africa; handsets beyond use are recycled. About 5 per cent of the phone's value is donated to one of the firm's 150 charity partners.

Armstrong-Bell said in the UK mobile phone users changed their handsets every eight months on average.

"You could therefore argue that there are 60 million handsets thrown away every year," he told The Scotsman. "Even if you take a small portion of that, it's still big business. Our client base is growing exponentially."

After Zonzoo's UK launch, Armstrong-Bell has set a target of recycling 7,000 handsets from Britain per day. He said he had already reached 2,000 mobiles a day in Spain after the brand was launched there in mid-July.

Armstrong-Bell intends to spend between 3m and 8m on advertising in each target market – some of which will be raised through revenue-share agreements with television stations.

Last year, Greener Solutions raised 2m from Belgian private equity funds StoneFund and Oak Invest. Armstrong-Bell had intended to float the company on Aim in 2007, but the initial public offering (IPO) was pulled at the 11th hour due to "market conditions".

Armstrong-Bell had hoped to raise 10m through the listing.

"The market fell away from under my feet," he admitted.

Armstrong-Bell said he had no immediate plans to attempt another IPO, but he added: "I keep an open mind."