IT GOES to prove the old adage that where there’s muck there’s brass.

The boss of Britain’s biggest scrap metal merchant, one of the key beneficiaries of the recycling boom, paid himself £9m last year, despite a collapse in commodity prices.

Philip Sheppard, 62, runs European Metal Recycling (EMR), a company that crushes 1m cars and 600,000 fridges every year. The business, based in Warrington, reported an underlying sales rise of 25% to £2.8 billion in 2008.

Sheppard has gradually built up the business from a small firm in northwest England to one that has 70 plants in Britain and 30 more overseas in America and China.

Like a modern day Steptoe and Son, EMR is a family business. Sheppard’s cousin Robin and brother Clive sit on the board. Together with Colin Iles, the managing director, this quartet last year split £19.5m in pay and bonuses. Sheppard’s son Chris is also a member of EMR’s executive team.

Trading began strongly last year, fuelled by the continuing Chinese commodities boom, though a collapse in demand caused by the downturn hit prices later on.

EMR’s pre-tax profits almost halved to £63m after a £41m impairment in the value of its American business.

“The strong market conditions of the first half of 2008, during which record high prices of both ferrous and non-ferrous material were recorded, were followed by unprecedented price attrition as industry demand adjusted to the global recession,” the company wrote in its annual business review.

However, over the past few years, it has benefited from the introduction of a range of recycling laws and, since the budget in April, has also been helped by the government’s £2,000-a-time “cash for bangers” incentive, designed to persuade motorists to scrap their old cars and buy new ones.

EMR was created in 1994 when Sheppard merged his group with Coopers Holdings, based in Swindon. He was recently ranked 156th in The Sunday Times Rich List, which valued the family’s wealth at £330m.

Despite the company’s breakneck expansion, it has never needed to sell shares to third-party backers or via the stock market to raise money. According to the accounts, it had access to undrawn borrowings of £182m and refinanced its UK operations after the year-end.

EMR has also gone green. The company secured a £17m funding package to build a plastics recycling plant this year. The facility, in Worksop, will process “shredder residue”, a byproduct from the recycling of cars and consumer electronics.

The joint venture with American company MBA Polymers will be opened early next year with a capacity to process an annual 80,000 tonnes of waste.

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