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The History of D & J Metals
In 1976 Douglas began the Family business in the local area collecting household and factory scrap in a single 7.5 ton Ford Lorry. The business soon grew and within three years he took on his first yard in Cobholm high road 10 years later larger premises were required. In 1990 he moved to Gapton Hall, one of the first companies to buy just one acre of land. Douglas is now co-director with his Wife Maureen they run a fleet of four Volvo Lorries and employ seven full time staff. Owning now 3 acres of land up at the industrial estate they hire skips to the public and trade in Norfolk and Suffolk and buy scrap from customers turning up at the yard.
In 2007 the new addition of a £350,000 compressing and shearing machine made by the Belgian firm Lefort, which compresses metals to either bales or smaller two-foot long blocks, was installed at the firms base in Great Yarmouth with an open day held to show customers old and new what could now be achieved in the world of scrap metal. The new machine can do in half-an hour the work it used to take two men all day to do.
There is now a fleet of new vehicles collecting scrap metal throughout Norfolk and Suffolk, they buy scrap from customers turning up at the yard and operate a new digital public weighbridge at the site.
The scrap can be anything from washing machines to cars and bicycles, heating pipes to car parking ticket machines also factory and farm machinery to unwanted tools. The scrap is sorted and processed at the firms yard and is sold on for smelting in foundries to produce new steel. These days 75% of metal from the yard ends up abroad for recycling, mostly in China, Portugal and Spain.
The Gray family place great emphasis on regular investment in the firm and believe they are helping to recycle the worlds limited resources for the benefit of future generations.
D and J Metals also operate a household and industrial waste skip hire service whereby skips can be hired out to customers and any waste can be taken back to the fully operational transfer section at the yard to extract any recyclable materials for further use.
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