Subscribe to this blog's feedNow here’s a tale of our times. St Modwen, the property developer that specialises in regenerating so-called brown field sites (generally land formerly used by now defunct industrial concerns) recently got planning consent to build 4,000 homes on the old British Steel site at Llanwern, south Wales.
Normally such sites involve a costly clean-up operation. But not this one. The cost of the remediation work was more than recouped by the sale of scrap steel and copper from the old electricity cables left behind. Apparently they yielded a sum in the region of £3 million.
Stephen Burke, St Modwen’s development director, is reported as saying the company twigged it might be onto a good thing when, out of the blue, a local scrap metal merchant offered £10,000 to cart the lot away. Nice try.
