Welcome to GNAAS Trading Company Ltd

Our business was established by the Great North Air Ambulance Service and is committed to giving 100 per cent of its profits to the charity. We have grown to become the charity’s biggest single donor.

Recycling is our passion. We collect unwanted goods from Berwick in the North, to York in the South, from Whitby in the East to Whitehaven in the West. Our fleet of vehicles is 23 strong, staffed by 54 employees, and based at our two sites at Newton Aycliffe Business Park in County Durham and Skirsgill Business Park in Penrith, Cumbria.

While door to door clothing collections are the main source of our income, we also collect recyclable materials from businesses. Collections include card, paper, plastics, mobile phones and used ink/ toner cartridges. We also run a paper shredding service and have recently opened a discount shop at our Newton Aycliffe site which sells high street goods at up to half price.

For more information about any of our services, and how we can help turn your waste into life-saving donations, please have a look around our website.

Clare Crabtree - Marketing Manager

Often seen in the office scouring the internet for bulk buy bargains, Clare Crabtree is in charge of making the Trading Company shop run like clockwork. The shop sells returns and end-of-line items from high street stores and has proved to be a massive success since opening in Autumn 2010. The items, which range from toys to camping equipment, handbags to furniture, are sold at up to 50 per cent of the price in the high street.

Clare has played a crucial role in the shop’s expansion. It started life as just a few items being sold off the top of pallets in a warehouse used by the Trading Company vans. It now has its own 5,500 square foot unit, which is bursting with stock and popular with customers, who travel all over the region to pick up a bargain.

Clare must identify saleable stock then get it into the warehouse. Big sellers at the moment are toys and furniture, some of which is put together in a nearby unit by Clare and the team.

“The furniture leaves the shop as fast as it comes in,” she says.

Other items are sold on eBay, where Clare also sells new printer cartridges which have been donated.

She has been at the business for more than nine years and has seen it grow dramatically in that time.

She adds: “Steve and the team have the drive to press this forward and that’s what we need, especially when we are working towards raising money for the charity.

“I love working here. It’s just the atmosphere of working somewhere where everybody gets on. It’s great to have a job where you get out of bed everyday looking forward to it.”