Stubborn 'alter ego' of Cash for Scrap

Bill Conway, owner of Cash for Scrap, is the only person ever jailed in this country for pollution offences. Picture / Dean Purcell

A filthy scrap yard with a claimed turnover of $60,000 a day is run by a banned company director who is the only person ever jailed in this country for pollution offences.

Described in a 2004 Environment Court decision as the "alter ego" of Otara's Cash for Scrap, William Victor George Conway was nowhere in sight this week when the Auckland Regional Council closed his business down.

Using rarely exercised powers under the Resource Management Act, ARC pollution staff, with police and security guards, cut through a fence to access the Bairds Rd site and locked out company staff.

The council's action was the first time an industrial site has been seized in Auckland.

Mr Conway was once a demolition man but moved into metal, taking over the Bairds Rd site in the late 1990s.

He has been banned as a director in two companies that went into liquidation: Auckland Demolition & Scrap Ltd and Independent Demolitions Ltd. Both operated at Bairds Rd.

As a director, according to the banning report, he was found to have traded recklessly, and while insolvent, he had not left enough money for creditors.

The liquidator said Auckland Demolition & Scrap was unable to pay its debts because "Mr Conway stripped it of its cash for his own personal gain".

In an Environment Court judgment issued by Judge Fred McElrea late last year, Mr Conway was described as Cash for Scrap's "alter ego" who admitted he was responsible for the day-to-day running of both Millineum Investments and Cash for Scrap.

The ARC is in a difficult position.

"This has to go to the death otherwise it sends the wrong message to the rest of the industry," said consultant Campbell Sturrock, who regularly visited Bairds Rd during his 11 years on the ARC's pollution team.

Brought in this week to help with the impounding of Cash for Scrap, Mr Sturrock and current ARC pollution team leader Rowan Carter watched in frustration as Justice Judith Potter ruled in the High Court at Auckland that the council should cease its action immediately.

She ordered the company to pay the costs of the impoundment and to clear one of its sites of metal. But it was cold comfort to the ARC.

"The ARC has used every available enforcement tool, this guy has even been to prison, yet we still haven't even got applications for resource consents."


Heavy metal

2001: Auckland Regional Council investigates puncturing of 14 44-gallon drums that spilled oil into nearby stream at Cash for Scrap's Baird Road site.

December 2002: Enforcement orders issued in the Environment Court to stop Cash for Scrap operating; company ordered to apply for resource consents under the Resource Management Act.

2004: Mr Conway pleads guilty to eight charges of instructing employee to puncture drums, serves six weeks of a three-month sentence. Cash for Scrap fined $25,000, Millineum Investments $15,000.

June 2005: Conway and wife, Carol Down, director of Cash for Scrap, sentenced to three-month and one-month jail terms respectively; fines and costs totalling $35,000 imposed.

December 2005: Environment Court orders company to comply with RMA, gives ARC powers to shut site down.

April 2006: Enforcement orders actioned but later stayed by High Court until July.

Total pollution fines and costs to date: $150,000


A bit of drop, tuck and roll - and it brings in $60,000 a day 

It's a good time to be in the scrap business.

But even so, merchants were impressed with the claimed turnover of Otara's Cash for Scrap.

Lawyer Tony Banbrook claimed in the High Court at Auckland this week that Cash for Scrap, which employs around a dozen workers at its Bairds Rd site, turns over $60,000 a day.

"I'm not saying it's not possible but that's a huge amount of money," said Christchurch-based scrap dealer Greg Maunsell, who has been in the business for five years.

He runs Scrap Metal Recycling in Christchurch and co-owns another yard in Ashburton.

The second business, started three years ago, has doubled turnover every year since.

"The secret of our success is, we drop, truck and roll anything and everything and we're reliable," he said.

The Auckland Regional Council says Cash for Scrap handles between 2000 and 3000 tonnes of steel scrap a month.

At between $50 and $100 a tonne, that's good money.

"He'd be one of the biggest dealers in the country if he was doing that much," said Scrap Metal Recycling Association of New Zealand spokesman Trevor Munro.

But commodities are a good business to be in just now. Nonferrous metals such as copper are making "scrappies" good money, with prices rising up to 60 per cent in the past couple of years to around $7000 or more a tonne.

Mr Munro said: "If you couldn't make money in the scrap business now you never would. It's been a good time for the past 12 months."