Cory Environmental, Southend on Sea

Cory Environmental started out in 1896 as William Cory and Son Ltd, transporting coal into London on the River Thames.  Coal was the lifeblood of the city and after they had made a fortune in the first thirty years they diversified and began to transport waste using the city’s waterways.  In the 1980s however the company grew weary of the union riddled coal and oil distribution business and these services were sold, and the business decided to expand into and concentrate upon waste management.

In 1990 the company was renamed Cory Environmental and it appointed Blunders and Bodger to run the municipal division.

Read the full story…

An Unexpected Travel Opportunity

Before I moved to Lincolnshire I used to work for a French waste (mis)management company called Onyx UK that had an optimistic business plan to take over refuse collection services in the UK and I worked at a depot in Maidenhead in Berkshire and managed the Windsor contract.   The company was always trying to cut costs and one day in February 1997 the Managing Director, a man called Percy Powell, telephoned me to tell me that he had heard of a new type of refuse collection vehicle with impressive labour saving innovations that offered potentially huge operational efficiencies and that he was interested in finding out more.

Read the full story…