Waste management companies in Ipswich sink, owing more than £3m to creditors

Go Tankers is based at Basepoint Business Centre, The Havens, Ipswich - which was also the home of BM Tankering Limited and Enviro-Waste Limited. Picture: Google Maps (Image: Archant)

A liquidation order was placed on January 30 on Enviro-Waste Limited, based at Basepoint Business Centre at Ransomes Europark in Ipswich.

The company has been operating since 1991, and provided waste disposal services in London as well as East Anglia.

A connected company, BM Tankering Limited, which also specialised in the collection of non hazardous waste and has the same registered office as Enviro-Waste Limited, has also just gone into liquidation.

BM Tankering Limited, which was incorporated in 2006, owned the 100% shareholding of Enviro-Waste Limited, and was a connected company. Mark Edwards was a director of both.

According to Companies House records, joint administrators were appointed to sell Enviro-Waste and BM Tankering together as a going concern, due to the interlinked nature of the two companies. But unfortunately no offers were received.

Claims totalling £1,871,620 have been received from unsecured creditors in the case of BM Tankering Limited, and according to the last accounts filed, for the period ending August 31 2016, Enviro-Waste Limited owed more than £2m in all to creditors.

BM Tankering offices in Ipswich supplied services to private customers, the water utility industry and local authorities across East Anglia.

In 2007, Enviro-Waste Limited was fined more than £90,000 after the horrific deaths of three workers in a slurry tank.

Employees Timothy Bartram, 46, George Barnes, 28, and Graham Morris, 54, were overcome by noxious fumes and drowned in three feet of slurry in a field, off the A1075, at Great Hockham, near Thetford, in July 2004 and the company’s former manager and director admitted breaching workplace health and safety legislation.

In 2010, the dry waste division of the company was sold to Pearson.

Then in 2012, another former director of Euro-waste Limited was jailed for fraud and theft from the company, where he had worked as a director between 2004 and 2007.

The business was left having to rebuild its reputation and made the difficult decision to let go 10 of its 47 staff.

Enviro-Waste Limited was based at Brunel Way, Mundford Road in Thetford until 2017, when it moved to Ipswich.

The liquidation of Enviro-Waste Limited has now passed to the Insolvency Service. A spokesperson for the Insolvency Service explained: “We have contacted the directors to say we want to speak to them. We are involved in cases where a company does not have the sufficient funds to fund an insolvency practitioner - as a last resort.”

A petition to wind up Enviro-Waste Limited was presented on December 14 by BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions Limited, claiming to be a creditor of the company, and last September, a petition was issued by HMRC.

Enviro-Waste has five outstanding charges against it.

Both the Envirowaste and the BM Tankering phone numbers now connect to Go Tankers, a septic system service operating across East Anglia which is also based at Basepoint Business Centre in Ipswich, and is also directed by Mark Edwards.

A liquidation notice for BM Tankering on Companies House also mentions Go Tankers as a connected debtor for the sum of £592,889, which is a connected business by virtue of the director and shareholder, Mr Edwards and Paul Thornton, as this business is being run as a partnership by them both.

Mr Edwards has been contacted for comment through Go Tankers, and a response has not yet been received.