THE FAB vehicle recycling centre on Cinderford’s Forest Vale Industrial Estate is is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a move to larger new premises.

But the company, which employs 35 staff, is only moving a few yards from its Broadmoor Road plant to the nearby old brickworks site.

The move from a 12,000 sq ft building to a new 50,000 sq ft home will allow it to quintuple its annual throughput of vehicles from its current 700.

FAB managing director Jason Cross said: “This represents an investment of about £1million through our bank Lloyds, but we are convinced it will pay off.

“We are bursting at the seams here and we are getting enquiries all the time from prospective new clients. The new site will make us a much more attractive proposition for larger companies and it will definitely allow us to increase our flow.

“At the moment we process about 700 vehicles a year. The new site will allow us to handle five times that.

“Most of our work force are local and they are a great and loyal bunch. They are very experienced and skilled at what they do - modern cars may be built by robots but they can only be taken apart by people and ours are the best.

“The Forest of Dean has become something of a centre of excellence for vehicle recycling on a number of levels including scrap, salvage, catalytic converters and of reusable parts.

“That means that anything we are left with that can’t be reused can be passed on to one of these other companies locally, which keeps as much of the business as possible here in the Forest.”