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Powys County Times

Powys' Potters win legal battle with multi-national firm

Powys Firm Potters have been awarded over £800,000 in a high court case after witnesses for a multi-national company tried to mislead the court. There was a record payout of £801,041.20 plus substantial costs in favour of Potters Waste Management over a contract for the treatment of refuse derived fuel (RDF) against multi-national company Geminor. A spokesperson for Llanidloes based firm said the case heard by Judge Hodge KC had been 'extremely stressful', calling the case 'completely unnecessary'. 'A sense of justice, fairness and balance has been delivered, and it strikes right at the heart of community businesses refusing to be bullied by global operators,' the statement added. The dispute involved domestic waste transported to Immingham in Lincolnshire from the Isle of Anglesey via a processing and baling plant in Liverpool run by Potter's nominated supplier Gaskells. Gaskells were to process the loose waste, recovering dry recyclables and wrapping the RDF bales produced. The bales were then to be collected by Geminor who would transfer the bales by road to the port in Immingham, from where they would be loaded onto transit cassettes by DFDS Shipping and taken to Gothenburg in Sweden to a plant generating energy from waste. Potters said both they and Gaskells 'detected an obvious bad smell early in our relationship with Geminor even before a large consignment of bales was rejected' – which Geminor claimed was the responsibility of DFDS. A spokesperson for Potters added: 'It is known in the industry that if DFDS decide to reject a load, it would make out a case report. That was not done in relation to nine rejected loads in question.' Potters asserted that by refusing to accept these or collect any further bales of RDF, Geminor was in breach of contract. Despite the claims by Geminor, the court acknowledged that between 2014 and 2018, Gaskells had sent out 3,000 loads of baled waste with a different agent and there had only been two loads rejected. Judge Hodge ruled that the evidence showed that it was not DFDS that had made the decision to reject the final nine lorry loads of waste – and that it must have been Geminor's decision. Judge Hodge also found that Geminor's witnesses had deliberately tried to mislead the court by claiming DFDS alone had decided to reject the loads. He said one witness was 'most unsatisfactory', labelling him 'evasive, with a tendency to ramble, and prone to speculation'. Judge Hodge found Geminor liable for the full amount of the loss of profit and losses Potters incurred by the contract breach. He said: 'Potters is entitled to recover damages on its primary, and hybrid, basis in the total sum of £801,041.20. 'I find that there was a binding agreement between Potters and Geminor. "There was also no repudiatory breach of contract on the part of Potters, and that, by refusing to collect further waste after 28 September 2017, Geminor was itself in repudiatory breach of that contract.'