Recycling specialist nets £250,000 in R&D Tax Credits

The Client

Green Steel is a recycling company based in Tredegar that has successfully recovered just under £250,000 from HMRC over the past three accounting periods through research and development (R&D) tax credit claims.

The company, which was founded in 2017, originally focused on reducing the amount of mattresses that end up in landfills by stripping them to separate their components. These components are then sent to a processing facility where they are baled and distributed to industries that can make use of them as raw materials.

Now the Green Steal team has expanded into the realm of recycling various waste streams including incinerator scraps (leftovers from waste to energy incinerator plants), steel cans from food and chemical industries as well as scrap yard offcuts.

Identifying the Innovation

Green Steel recycles various different types of waste metal sources. Each of these sources need to be handled differently, be processed by different plants, with different configurations. 

Green Steel has been developing and testing recycling processes for handling each of these waste streams, to allow them to split out their constituent parts and meet their ambition of 'Zero to Landfill.'

Discussing the importance of working with an R&D specialist, Director Milo Thomas said:  

“Previously we have found that the manufacturing industry is one of many areas where businesses are investing strongly in research and development, but where company directors and their financial advisors are often unaware that they qualify for R&D tax relief”

The Results

After a series of meetings, we identified more important details on the eligible R&D activities and explained exactly how we would manage the process of submitting their R&D project-related costs to our team. Keeping it simple and easy for them at every step.

Zest R&D carried out all the claim preparation work, while Green Steel supplied accounts information and project details. Initially there can be quite a lot of paperwork to prepare and submit, in order to put forward a good case, backed up with detailed evidence.

Their claim went through first time with no queries by HMRC and the tax relief payment was a significant and tangible benefit to the company. Green Steel received a cheque for a five-figure sum within six months of starting the claims process.

What Green Steel said about Zest R&D 

“We worked closely with Zest last year on our R & D claim, they made the whole process easy to understand and worked very efficiently to get our claim which was successful. They gave us good pointers for ongoing development which we have put to use for the following year.”

Could Your Recycling Business Qualify for R&D Tax Credits?

Find out if your business could qualify for R&D tax relief, with a 15 minute, no obligation consultation. We’ll talk about what work you’ve done and how much you could claim. Then you can decide how you want to proceed.