‍To celebrate the UN International Women’s Day 2024 and the theme ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’, TWM are celebrating the crucial part that our female members of staff play within the company.  The metal recycling sector has historically (and to some extent continues to be) a very male dominated sector so it is vital that we expose the fantastic work that our female members of staff undertake to keep the central cog at TWM moving so efficiently.

Of all the remarkable women employed at TWM many of our customers will know the one that we are celebrating this year - our weighbridge operative extraordinaire, Courtney Cornelius.

Courtney joined TWM nearly ten years ago in November 2014 having been headhunted from her job working in the mobile catering chalet (burger van) down the road from the yard at Basildon HQ. In a departure from the norm Courtney was directly employed to assist on the weighbridge (rather than in the offices as is more usual for female employees in this sector) booking in containers, checking loads and undertaking H&S compliance checks on all vehicles entering the yard.

Since then, Courtney has had a stint working in the Transport Office organising the haulage across the UK, booking in client collections and responding to client collection queries and managing the export hauliers. However, she can now be seen back managing the weighbridge and organising the hauliers entering the site and directing them to the respective tipping areas as well as overseeing the site CCTV and controlling vehicular movements with the yard managers and supervisors through the radio, which is never far from her side.

Courtney has, in her own words, seen and heard it all over the years and knows all the tricks in the book including drivers trying to tip a higher grade of material than that they had loaded (to receive a better price) and vehicles weighing off the weighbridge without all of their wheels being located on it - “Some of the drivers used to try their luck but know better of it now!”

When she first arrived on site all those years ago Courtney admits to feeling very nervous and being slightly intimidated, particularly as she was heading to an area of the yard previously dominated by men and was worried, she’d be “eaten alive”. Fortunately, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Yes, some of the drivers ‘chanced their luck’ in the early days but now they know she’ll give back as good as she gets and that they haven’t got a hope in hell of ‘getting the upper hand’. She also feels respected and valued from all within the company and knows that if she did experience anything untoward that it would be dealt with in the correct manner by the senior management team.

“Courtney truly is one in a million, she runs that weighbridge like a fine-tuned military operation, she knows everything that goes in and out and what’s going on where. It’s no surprise that we’ve also given her the unofficial role of ‘Company Events Organiser! We’d be lost without her” ~ Lewis Payne TWM Chief Operating Officer.

In the ten years since Courtney has been with TWM she has seen the company and the sector change enormously including the move to export greater amounts of material and the actions being undertaken by TWM especially to reduce the impact that metal recycling/processing activities can have on the environment – “Metal can be recycled to infinitum and 70% of the steel produced to date is still in use today”.

Going forward, Courtney would like to see more younger women (school/college leavers) entering the sector given the diverse roles that are on offer and the career opportunities that are available - “It’s not the ‘dirty’ sector everyone used to think it was, moreover it's enriching and diverse”.

Courtney can be seen managing the weighbridge every Tuesday – Friday so if you are going on to site, make sure to say ‘hi’. When she’s not at work Courtney is the mum to three small boys and like all working mums, never stops because after work its cooking dinner, helping with homework, listening to the older ones read and stories to the younger ones but in her words “she wouldn’t have it any other way”. It would seem that working at TWM you literally can ‘have it all’.

Happy International Women’s Day 2024 😊

“Women should be celebrated every day… IWD doesn’t just honour the iconic women who have changed history but encourages new generations to dream big and know that anything is possible.” – Molly McCook
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