Founded in 1951 with national operations across Sweden and pockets of Poland, IL Recycling is built on the premise of recycling as much as possible. The organisation views waste as a resource that is greatly underutilised and has been transforming its operations to better accommodate a more environmentally conscious marketplace.
Lars-Gunnar Almryd, President and CEO of the company, has been in his position since October 2008 and has many years of experience in the paper and recycling industries. He has a keen understanding of IL Recyclings history and has seen the company develop over the years. For the first 30 to 40 years, it was a paper-recycling company where we brought paper in, sorted it, and delivered it to paper mills as a raw material. The paper mills were basically the owners of the company. Doing this type of activity has changed in the past 20 years. It has gone from purchasing material to selling a service where you help customers become more sustainable by providing them with knowledge and equipment for sorting their waste and then for us to gain the recyclable material in an efficient way.
Also the collection customers have changed their requirements. They dont want seven or eight different suppliers to come and pick their material up per material; they want someone who solves all their recycling needs. We have adapted to this change. One of the major steps that was taken 15 to 20 years ago was building up our own collection and selling the services as well as putting up a logistics system to collect. The structure of the depots and sorting plants was already there, and we have taken steps in increasing the knowledge of treating all other materials outside of paper over the years. Today, we are a full-service provider working with all materials, and we have competence in all scenes, which means its a broader portfolio today.