For Mattress Recycling, calling the past couple of years ‘challenging’ would be an understatement. In May 2015, a fire destroyed the recycling company’s facility in south Vancouver. Then, almost exactly two years later, another fire decimated their Richmond plant.
“It’s been the most difficult thing that I’ve ever been through. The challenges were extreme in every aspect,” said CEO Fabio Scaldaferri, who co-founded the company in 2008.
But now the recycling firm, the largest of its kind in Western Canada, has sprung back with a state-of-the-art facility in Hope, B.C. and an expanded suite of recycling services and partnerships.
After an estimated $3.5-million investment, Scaldaferri says the new facility is much more appropriate to their needs, with previous challenges partly a function of the industrial landscape of Metro Vancouver.
“It was not very industry-friendly, especially for a small company like mine,” he said, adding that facilities in the area are often scarce and ill-suited for recycling operations. “In the end, you’re just leasing facilities that are super inappropriate for the type of business that we run. And recycling is a pretty unique thing. You need certain things and you generally can’t find them.”
The company has now set up shop in a new purpose-built facility, with easy access to the Trans-Canada Highway. “We addressed one major problem which was our bottleneck for transportation. We used to have basically no proper loading bays and now we have 22 dock loading bays,” he said.