On 24 April last year, Abilities Group’s recycling premises in Hillside Road in Glenfield were destroyed by a catastrophic fire. Just over a year later, Christine Young talked to managing director Peter Fraher and general manager Michael van der Merwe about an event they’d rather not remember, rebuilding the business and saving jobs, and their ambitions for Abilities’ future.
Abilities Group was founded in 1959, with a mission to provide work for people with disabilities in as close to normal work conditions as possible. It has not only survived, but thrived, with support from government, the business community, the public, philanthropists and philanthropic trusts, as well as its own commercial initiatives. That breadth of support was evident in the hours and days after last year’s fire, and has continued to sustain the organisation as it rebuilds after losing its primary ‘home’, and having to make some of its part time staff redundant in the wake of the fire.
It's been a challenging and difficult period, but not without also showing just how generous and caring the community, especially on the Shore, has been in ensuring Abilities not only survived but began to thrive again, albeit with some changes. And Abilities learned “We were a lot more resilient than we gave ourselves credit for,” says Michael. “Everyone pulled together to make sure we didn’t get stuck in the aftermath of the fire.”
Michael says some of the early support came from Auckland Council at the Concourse, Foundatiuon North and other trusts, and IT 360 and Westpac which gave Abilities laptops for admin staff in th week after the fire. As all computing systems, including payroll, which had only just joined been updated, were hosted in the cloud, they could be accessed immediately.
Windsor Park Baptist church provided space, catering and helped facilitate counselling sessions for all staff. “We didn’t know if we would survive. This was key to us moving forward looking for space,” he says.
One very capable ceo emailed the day after the fire offering assistance; this “wonderful person” still volunteers on a weekly basis – support that has been invaluable in freeing up time for Peter and Michael to continue to rebuild. Still others gave generously to a Givealittle page, and another client put Abilities in touch with the owners of the building at 16 Kaimahi Road in Wairau valley, where most of the operations are now operating. Perhaps even more importantly, while some corporate clients who use Abilities’ services had to look elsewhere while the group rebuilt, most clients and many members of the public have continued to use Abilities as their primary recycling centre. And new clients have come on board.
As its website says, Abilities Group is “a recycling charity with a heart for people with disabilities. Our aim is to enrich their lives by offering fulfilling work opportunities. At the same time, we’re also dedicated to protecting the environment and reducing waste. We offer comprehensive recycling services for a wide range of materials.” This includes electronic waste, documents, batteries, soft plastics from supermarket collection points, polystyrene, cardboard, and paper.
While most of Abilities’ operations have been able to resume, there have been inevitable changes. First among these was the change of location. And because of space constraints at Kaimahi Road, operations have been split, with a small office in Poland Road, and a new e-waste facility opening in Rosedale only in March this year. This, Peter says, must be “the first off-grid-waste facility” ever. Abilities leased a bare site (previously a parking area), and have erected two huge container shelters, augmented with opened-out shipping containers. But it lacked water, power or sewage connections. Portable toilets have provided toilet facilities, LPG generators and solar panels provide power, and Abilities has installed tanks to collect rainwater.
Peter and Michael expect that the e-waste recycling, and the group’s two Trade Me operations will continue to operate from Rosedale in the foreseeable futurefor corproat clients. Another bright light for Abilities, Michael notes, was that a brand new e-waste shredder, that had just arrived from overseas last year, had not been installed before the fire, and still sits in its shipping crate in storage – provided free of cost by a corporate supporter. It’s hoped that this can be installed soon, as confidence grows that Abilities can begin to resume the growth path it had been on pre-fire. “We just need somewhere to put it and enough power to run it,” says Michael.
Logistics aside, the e-waste and Trade Me divisions are important sources of revenue for the group. At Abilities, as they say, “we don’t just recycle – we also re-use”. If donated electronics, like laptops, mobile phones or computers, are still in good condition, they become part of the group’s ‘asset management’ operation and are sold on the Abilities Group Trade Me page, which can be found through the group’s Facebook page. A second Trade Me operation, Michael says, is for the “weird and wonderful” – collectibles like really old computers, cameras, or sewing machines. Both are good sources of revenue, as are the many circuit boards the staff extract. Michael’s proud that they have just shipped the group’s hundredth containerload of printed circuit boards to Japan, where they are separated into up to 22 separate precious metals, including gold, silver, copper and palladium. When Abilities started sending these overseas, it sent one container a year; that has now grown to seven per year.
What Abilities no longer has, following the fire, is a heat shrink machine for packaging jobs . Nor does it have a polystyrene smelter for recycling polystyrene, or a document shredder. But it still accepts all these materials for sorting and redistributing to partner recycling facilities that can handle these materials.
“We did lose some [corporate] clients, because we couldn’t offer the services they needed,” says Michael. “But we picked up some new clients and others are ready to come back” as soon as Abilities can offer the full range of services it used to.
Peter is confident Abilities can now begin to look forward to almost doubling its staff with disabilities to the 200 it had aimed for before last April. Even before the fire, the plan was to find something bigger to ensure Abilities can continue to support disabled people in employment. What was then a desire is now a need; the Kaimahi Road premises can only accommodate 60 people at any one time, and are a tightly packed hive of activity with secure document sorting, contract packaging, cardboard, plastic and paper recycling, and polystyrene sorting and bagging. Even as Channel talked to Peter and Michael, trucks arrived with more loads of materials collected from corporate clients ready to be disgorged for sorting and recycling. It’s clear that for growth, even maintaining a two-site operation, as Peter says, new premises will need to be substantial.
“With all the support we have had we’re confident that we’re ready to take the next step,” says Peter. “We’ve had amazing support and we want that to continue; it all makes a difference.
“We want to increase employment numbers – it will take support to achieve, but it’s just finding the right place for our team.”
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