Ipswich-based scrap metal recyclers Sackers has announced that it will donate the £20,000 found in a safe at its yard to charity.
Speaking with letsrecycle.com, David Dodds, managing director of Sackers, said an operator made the find when the safe was put into an oversized scrap pile to cut them to size before melting them down.The money in the safe was found in June and handed into the police but as nobody came forward to claim it, it has been given to the East Anglican Children’s Hospice and the St Elizabeth hospice.
“In our scrapyard we put oversized scrap to one side for large processing cranes to shape them to a manageable size. Within this pile was a safe, which is particularly important because if it gets to the furnace whole it would explode,” he explained.
When the safe was shredded MR Dodds said that coins and bags of money began pouring out on to the yard. He explained that they called the police in immediately so that due diligence could be carried out over the notes.
Once the police found that the money had not been made illegally and no-one had come forward to claim it, Sackers preceded to the magistrate’s court to get possession of the cash to donate it to the East Anglican Children’s Hospice and the St Elizabeth hospice.
Mr Dodds said: “Morally it’s absolutely correct to donate the money. It wasn’t ours to begin with. It was a unanimous decision form all the managers to donate, particularly to local charities”.
This is not the first instance of finding valuables at the scrap yard, however. Mr Dodds explained that five years ago a safe from a local church appeared at the recycling plant after a clear out.
The crane operator was calving the metals down to size when out fell some 18th Century silver goblets.
“When the vicar saw the goblets, he said a little prayer as they would have been lost forever in the furnace,” Mr Dodds said
The money was found in this safe in June, before being handed to the police.