Monday, 8th June, 2020
Cory demonstrates resilience through COVID crisis
Cory Riverside Energy CEO Dougie Sutherland has thanked members of staff who have helped ensure that the company is emerging through the Covid-19 lockdown period in robust shape.
The first insights of pandemic’s impact on the business have been published along with the company’s 2019 financial results. The 2019 results show that, during the calendar year Cory processed 742k tonnes of London’s waste and generated 304GWh of electricity to power London’s homes and businesses.
EBITDA increased from £65.3m to £67.7m while turnover dropped slightly from £118.2m to £115.4m.
After the year end, as the extent of the virus’ impact became clearer, Cory began a rigorous scenario-testing plan which confirmed that, even under a series of worst-case scenarios lasting for up to a year, the business would still be in robust shape.
In the event, the Cory business, with its 320 employees who were all classed as essential workers, continued to operate through the Covid lockdown to ensure that Londoners’ domestic and commercial waste was efficiently and consistently dealt with.
Cory CEO Dougie Sutherland, said:
During the lockdown period we did see an initial drop in Commercial and Industrial (C&I) waste volumes as businesses closed operations. But the majority of Cory’s waste is Municipal, coming from households of a number of London Boroughs, and here we saw waste and recycling volumes hold at pre-Covid levels.
Now that London is coming out of lockdown, C&I waste volumes are increasing week by week. It’s not clear how long it will take for the volumes of C&I waste to return to pre Covid-19 levels, however, the broader market picture is that London and the South East produces significantly more waste than there are facilities to process it.
This structural deficit has meant that we have been able to secure other non-recyclable waste streams to make up the shortfall from our regular C&I customers.
And looking to the bigger picture, what has been made clear to me and my leadership team is that our people have really gone beyond the call of duty over the last few months. They have operated safely and diligently with admirable dedication to provide London with its critical waste service, for which we are really grateful.