Chennai company hopes to mine money from shredded paper

With plans to tap the corporate sector with high paper usage, city-based Global Waste Recyclers has decided to set up document shredding units in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, said a top company official.

The Rs.43 crore turnover company also plans to set up one more waste paper recycling centre here.

"Many of the corporate shred their papers and they are disposed as garbage. With our own shredding units we will offer our services and pay the corporates for the shredded paper after adjusting our costs," Bharath L. Pujara, managing director, told reporters here Tuesday.

According to him, corporates can even send their representatives to supervise the shredding process.

He said the company will be setting up four shredding units - two here and one each in Bengaluru and Hyderabad - targeting the corporate sector.

"We have also decided to set up our third waste paper recycling centre here at an outlay of around Rs.5 crore. The four shredding units would involve an outlay of around Rs.10 crore," said director Umesh M. Pujara.

Global Waste Recyclers source and process waste paper within and outside India and supply them in bales to paper mills.

According to Bharath Pujara, imported waste paper is mostly virgin paper with is of better quality whereas the domestically-sourced paper are mostly already recycled.

He said major portion of the waste paper in India ends up in landfills as there is no organised system of collecting them at the individual end.

"On the other hand the waste paper import bill which is currently around $1 billion is going up. Indian paper industry imports around four million tonnes of waste paper annually which is around 57 percent of its raw material needs," Umesh Pujara said.

Replying in negative to the query on the company's plans to converting the street corner waste paper merchants under its brand, he said the current idea is to reach out to the residential apartments and source it at source.