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.

Jim Maitchell - Teams Manager

With seven teams of five to coordinate and 17’500 clothing bags to be distributed every day, Jim Maitchell’s job is all about communication and organisation. Having graduated from the job of bag distribution, Jim knows both the company and the region inside out and has to ensure the teams do a thorough job of distributing the bags and then later collecting them, hopefully bulging with donated items.

The teams cover an area from York to Berwick and from East Coast to West, and move in huge circles making sure that as many homes as possible have the chance to donate goods to the Great North Air Ambulance Service. While three members of the team are tasked with bag distribution, the other two are collecting full bags that had been handed out earlier in the week.

It requires a great deal of planning and coordination to ensure that the operation runs smoothly, and that is where Jim comes in.

“If you have a good team around you, like we do, then you do a great job and get a lot of enjoyment out of it - if you work for them, they’ll work for you,” he adds.

The job isn’t without its difficulties. The clothes collection market is more competitive now than ever before, and that’s before thefts and bogus collectors are taken into account. It all means the teams have to be on top of their game to ensure as many bags are distributed as possible.

But Jim says that despite the difficult conditions, the people of the region have remained responsive when presented with the chance to donate to the Great North Air Ambulance Service.

“We are still finding that we are getting the support,” he adds. “People appreciate the service the charity provides, particularly in the rural areas. When you are out and about they will tell you about a family member or a friend that has been helped by the air ambulance.