Brother’s European remanufacturing facility celebrates two major milestones

Brother’s market leading recycling plant in Slovakia – one of Europe’s first market leading toner remanufacturing facilities – is celebrating 15 years since opening. It has also been awarded carbon neutral status, the second Brother recycling facility to achieve the accreditation.

The factory, built to meet the growing demand for toner recycling across Europe, is the largest of 4 Brother Recycling facilities. Collectively they remanufacture over 2.6 million toners annually – reusing enough waste to fill 3 Olympic Sized swimming pools every year¹.

Dave Lawrence, Director of Brother Industries Slovakia, said: “we opened Brother Industries Slovakia in 2007 when global toner remanufacturing was in its infancy. We were one of the first facilities of its kind in Europe. Since then, our operation has had to grow year-on-year to support the volume of cartridges being returned by Brother customers and partners. To date we have remanufactured over 18 million cartridges in Slovakia which shows how committed our customers are about supporting the environment and that they believe in our vision of sustainability.”

The Slovak facility takes empty toner cartridges, assess them, replaces worn parts, and creates remanufactured cartridges that go through stringent checks to match the same quality as new. In doing so, 80 percent² of the original material is reused, with the remainder being recycled and used to make other Brother products.

This anniversary also comes as the facility has been confirmed as carbon neutral³. Alongside Brother’s UK facility (which obtained carbon neutral status in 2021), they operate one of the only zero-waste-to-landfill, carbon neutral remanufacturing processes in Europe.

Dave Lawrence added; “achieving carbon neutral status for such a large operation is significant and something that we are all incredibly proud of. We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously, and already undertake many initiatives to reduce our environmental impact. Anything we cannot directly re-use is recycled, contributing to a closed loop process where nothing goes to landfill.

“On top of that, much of the energy we need to operate is generated from solar panels and a ground heat pump we have installed. This natural source of energy has reduced our CO₂ emissions by 48% alone. It is innovations like this that ensure we continually improve and challenge ourselves to run the most sustainable remanufacturing process possible.”