Tucked away in a corner of Frome there is an incredible production line which is using world beating technology to provide shelter to the most vulnerable in the world, offer an environmentally friendly alternative to a product that has a huge carbon footprint AND is finding a use for those pesky plastic bottle tops.

It is called Storm Board and it has quite a story.

Frome Nub News aims to be supportive to every element of the town's community from business and shops to people and charities and clubs and sports organisations.

We are happy to profile some of these local businesses and groups in this our feature UP CLOSE IN FROME in the hope that we can be a supportive springboard for their full return to business as usual.

This is our latest UP CLOSE with Storm Board, where you can drop off your unwanted and unrecyclable plastic and know that it is doing good.

We spoke to the Managing Director Archie Hardyment who explained in simplified terms what the company does: Put simply : " We take what is otherwise unrecyclable plastic and make it into a useful, long-lasting, alternative to plywood."

The technology was inspired by one of the most horrific natural disasters. In January 2010 over 220,000 people died when a devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 struck Haiti.

Frome plastic moulding expert Nick Stillwell saw photos of torn up wood and homes destroyed, washing up alongside tonnes of waste plastic, and wondered why something could not be done to rebuild homes and structures with all that waste.

The answer was a machine built as a prototype in 2011 which essentially is akin to a big sandwich toastie maker, using chips of plastic waste which would otherwise go to landfill to make lightweight durable board.

He formed a company, Protomax and now with latest honed version of the machinery the warehouse in Frome eats up two tonnes of plastic bottle tops and seven tonnes of other non-recyclable plastics per week to manufacture the boards.

The Managing Director told Nub News : " We have what could be seen as four giant George Foreman grills in the factory. The first step is to put a layer of powdered plastic onto the two plate surfaces and then on top on one of those we put on a middle material and then you close plates and then cook it, and then let it cool and that is how the boards are made.

"We take pulverised powdered bottle tops for the skin material and the other recyclable plastic is cleaned and granulated and then we put it in the machines.

" What is unique about Storm Board is that the other kinds of plastic boards need a higher grade of plastic, whereas we can use the ugly unusable stuff no one wants or can use. We can mix up different types of plastic.

"The real challenge of recycling is separating out the different types of plastic once they are already mixed. It is hard to do and uneconomic.

We can take plastic which is all mixed up, all different plastic types and put it into our boards. That's what makes us different."

The boards are about twice the price of plywood - which is generally imported from India or China - so their carbon footprint is much smaller and in the long term are better value - because they last and don't require any painting or varnishing.

They can then be used in a variety of ways, and are easy to cut, and can be made into anything from dog kennels, to benches, from signs to emergency shelters, anything you can make from a plywood sheet you can make out of the boards.

Storm Board builds are now being used in Greece and in Italy along with a new project making refugee homes in Jordan. Closer to home the product is being sold in building material suppliers including Travis Perkins.

Are you future proofed?

" People have asked me this before. What happens if everyone gets much better at recycling to plastic ?" Archie responded.

"But even if plastic stopped being used, there are literally millions of tonnes of plastic in the ground which you could just go and mine if required. That's an extreme example but there is no way that we are not going to be producing any more single use plastic than we are now. (Sadly) there will be more plastic created in the next ten years than there was in the preceding ten years. That's the reality."

The company is hopeful that Protomax will be able to sell the machinery so that people all over the world can make boards from their waste plastic and do it all locally.

With this patented technology the machines in Frome are currently working 16 hours a day, four days a week.

The boards can be used anywhere you could use wood, except currently as advertising hoardings but that is only because they currently come coloured from the mix of plastic colours made to produce them.

Archie Hardyment is sorry that they are not being used more widely.

" Our boards are perfectly good to be used as marketing hoardings, but they can't be painted - so corporates who want an exact colour match buy plywood then throw them away after use. Ours can be re-used and re-used. And we have a lower carbon footprint than plywood. So rather than a material which has been transported around the world we use local resources. "

Some local Frome businesses are already using the boards, the latest sold to the new sandwich shop on Stony Street, which is using it as a chalk board to show off their menu.

There is also a potentially massive deal in the offing, but like the technology itself, Storm Board is understandably keeping that secret.

But what they can tell me is that they are more than happy to take all the plastic bottle tops you can drop in.

"We do get through an awful lot of material. The company Lush used to collect bottle tops from their stores but they are no longer doing that, so now we can take as many bottle tops as Frome can give us. There is no limit to our capacity. "