COMPANY PROFILE BY SANDRA DICK
IT’S home to some of Europe’s tallest buildings, where every day around 150,000 people keep the wheels of British business and fi nance turning.
Opportunity knocked for go-ahead company
“It’s been a case of always looking to expand and looking for opportunities,” she said, refl ecting on the business’s 70th anniversary year.
Canary Wharf has become a London icon, from the stunning skyscrapers towering over the Thames, to the image of fast talking bankers, billion-pound business deals, and media moguls.
Back in 1947 though, the Isle of Dogs – where Canary Wharf is located – was slowly emerging from the rubble left behind by dozens of Luftwaff e bombing raids - a bit battered, but in true ‘spirit of the Blitz’ fashion ready to get to work.
Around 50 miles north in Luton, civil engineer Reg Cawley and wife Molly were rethinking life after the war with a plan to start a new business. The idea that one day the business would become somehow linked to a glittering corner of London’s East End, would have been the last thing they could have imagined.
Always looking to expand and looking for opportunities
Seventy years on, and Cawleys livery is a familiar sight to the thousands of workers who fl ock to the Canary Wharf area every day. As the docklands area evolved, so did Reg’s business, shifting from helping to build roads and shifting sand and ballast, to waste management and a contract with Canary Wharf Management Ltd to take care of waste services at a site known for its ‘green’ credentials.
It has, agrees Reg’s grand-daughter Anna Cawley, been quite a journey. Today Cawleys is as diverse as they come, switching from hazardous waste to mixed recycling, taking on board anything from heavy industrial cleaning to leading the way back in 2008 with the UK’s fi rst commercial food to anaerobic digestion service.
“It’s also been quite organic growth. We’ve kept an eye open for where we might move to and gone for it.”
Certainly, today’s business is a far cry from their roots, when Reg launched Stanbridges (Luton) Ltd back in 1947.
By the early 1950's his brother Frank was on board, and the newly named F & R Cawley Ltd was busy delivering materials that laid the foundations for the M1, carrying out bulk excavation for the Vauxhall Spare Parts Factory, and suppling material to the test track at Millbrook.
Their fl eet of small tippers removed ashes and waste from Laportes, Electrolux and George Kents. What was at the time regarded as a supplementary use of the fi rm’s resources turned into the start of a pioneering waste disposal business: soon Cawleys would become one of the fi rst in the UK to adopt the Dempster Dumpster waste collection system.
Reg’s death in 1972 led to sons Brian and Jon taking over, and the shift from earth moving and building materials business to waste management gathered speed.
Long before recycling and reusing became buzz words, Cawleys struck out to create one of the UK’s fi rst waste reclamation factories, custom designed to minimise the amount of waste heading to landfi ll.
Jonathon Cawley, Molly Cawley and Brian Cawley with local MP Kelvin Hopkins
12 SHM July, 2017
www.skiphiremagazine.co.uk
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