MP backs oil recycler's tax fight

8:10am Monday 18th August 2008

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WYRE Forest MP, Dr Richard Taylor, is backing Stourport-based OSS Group, the UK's largest waste oil recycling company, in its campaign to stop a new tax on recycled fuel oil, planned for this November.

The company, which employs more than 100 people in Barracks Road, on Sandy Lane Industrial Estate, uses waste lubricating oil, collected from thousands of garages and servicing centres, to produce a recycled fuel equivalent to virgin fuel oil and known as Clean Fuel Oil (CFOO).

It is the best environmentally sustainable means of dealing with some of the 800,000 tonnes of waste oil produced each year in the UK, says the company.

To date, such waste derived fuel oil has been free of tax. If Government plans go ahead, a tax of 9.29p will be added to each litre, the same as the tax on virgin heavy fuel oil.

According to OSS managing director, Andy McNair: "This could kill not only the market for recycled fuel oil but also remove the incentive for companies such as us to invest in leading edge recycling technology.

"Government wants to encourage recycling. This will have the opposite effect. At present, there is a reasonable price difference between the cost of virgin fuel and waste derived fuel.

“Adding this tax will increase the cost by approximately 30 per cent and bring prices more in line with virgin fuels. The incentive for industry to use recycled fuel will be lost.

"Apart from cost, the top quality processed fuel oil burns more efficiently - customers use five per cent less - and cleaner, for example, a 35 per cent reduction in sulphur emissions. And if waste oil isn't used as a base for a fuel, where's it going to go?”

OSS is lobbying both Defra and the Treasury and has already obtained the backing of Dr Taylor, as well as other MPs.

According to Dr Taylor: "OSS has developed technologies and processes to address a major environmental problem facing the United Kingdom, namely the removal of hazardous waste oil from the waste stream.

“I am deeply concerned that the Government's duty plans risk undermining that achievement."