In this series of articles, we will be sharing exclusive coverage from APF 2024. 

At APF 2022, Tubex set out to provide customers with answers to their concerns around the use of plastic tree shelters, offering two solutions – the Tubex collection and recycling programme and its own biodegradable product, Tubex Nature.

Catching up with Forestry Journal two years on, commercial director James Taylor said both solutions continued to see high demand.

Commenting on the recycling programme, he said: “It was in its infancy at the last APF, so it’s been really nice to see how it’s growing. 

“We still have the bag collection where you can pay for the bag, but the really nice step forward has been the national hubs. So by working with all the partner organisations and the distributors, we’ve managed now to expand to around 20 hubs across the country.

“We're still a big advocate for traditional shelters and as long as we can ensure they are collected and reprocessed, that will still be our preferred or lowest-impact solution. But we're still working hard to make the Nature product as good as possible for those areas that are harder to reach and there's not the possibility to go and collect and recycle.

“With biodegradable products we're still in that steep learning curve, so the products are evolving all the time. We've been really working to make the product a lot stronger, extending the life in the field.”

Looking to the future, he said: “We’re going to continue to see the growth of the collection and recycling scheme. We've now passed more than a million tree shelters recycled by our calculations. So I think that has still a long way to go. The ambition there is to keep doubling every year. And then we'll continue to evolve the Nature product and try to make its performance as close as possible to the traditional plastic shelters.”

Head to our YouTube channel to watch a full version of this interview, which will be published in the coming weeks.