Retirement of Gerry West

Archiv – At the end of last year, Gerry West retired as Sales Director of Severnside Recycling. Having represented the recovered paper industry’s interests in a number of national and international fora over recent decades, he will henceforth be focusing his efforts on ’playing some golf and enjoying life’, he says.At the end of last year, Gerry West retired as Sales Director of Severnside Recycling. Having represented the recovered paper industry’s interests in a number of national and international fora over recent decades, he will henceforth be focusing his efforts on ’playing some golf and enjoying life’, he says.
Mr West was a council member of the British Waste Paper Association throughout the early 1980s and is a Past President of the Paper Division of world recycling organisation BIR. He was also the inaugural President of the European Recovered Paper Association (ERPA) and counts as a career highlight ERPA’s work with the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) to compile grade lists. ’It brought together the European waste paper business and CEPI for the first time,’ recalls Mr West. ’There was a lot of discussion but ultimately a lot of accord.’
Mr West is retiring at what he perceives to be a tumultuous time in the history of the recovered paper industry. Given ever more ambitious U.K. recycling targets and developments within the domestic producer sector, he expects his home country to become ’a major net exporter of recovered fibre’.