Wilcox, one of the largest textile recyclers in the UK, has historically collected clothing material from charity shops in the two counties before transporting the material back to its national sorting centre in Wolverhampton.
But, the company now argues it is under pressure to cut costs in an increasingly fraught market for textile recyclers.
With the price for charity shop textiles in decline over recent years, the charity sector has worked harder to extract more value from the material by removing more clothing, opening larger operations or rotating stock.
According to director Martin Wilcox, this has had a “serious impact” on the viability of collections for the industry.
He told letsrecycle.com: “The reasoning behind the switch was essentially cost based. We found that the outreach charity shops were having less material per collection and that therefore our key performance indicator of kilograms per kilometre was under pressure.
“We also quality checked materials and found that the fashion content in these outreach areas was not high enough to provide a profitable yield.”
Price
Mr Wilcox added: “The shop price paid for charity shops in these areas [Devon and Dorset] has dropped to between 20 and 25p per kilogram, £200 to £250 per tonne to reflect the difficult geography and cost of collections.”
The firm says its remains committed to continuing local authority, textile bank and waste company collections in Devon and Dorset where collections are of higher volume and equipment is more efficient.
Wilcox has also provided contact details for these areas to other trade collectors, so that local charities can continue to move material.
Africa
Prices for both textile bank and charity shop collections have continued to slide in the latter half of 2015, with the strength of the pound continuing to cause problems for UK used clothing markets in Africa.
The devaluation of the Chinese yuan has also had a significant impact on used clothing exports, while growing calls across East Africa to ban imports of used clothing from Britain in an effort to support local producers has also created uncertainty.
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