
The people
on the line.
Driven is run by engineers and operators, not a management layer. The people who specify the process are the people who stand next to it.
Mary Sweere
CEO
Mary is the CEO and a strategic consultant, guiding the successful ramp-up of an EU pyrolysis plant to full production and profitability. She played a pivotal role in shaping the company's commercial strategy and securing lucrative offtake agreements for critical oil and carbon black supply contracts, and leveraged her extensive government network to ensure regulatory and environmental compliance.
Mary built out 10 micro biomass plants in the UK in a 2-year period, obtaining the buildings, receiving planning and permitting, installing equipment and commissioning – on time and on budget.
Mary holds a BA in Economics (Creighton Jesuit University) and an MIA Economics (Columbia University).
Richard Simpson
Advisor & CFO
Richard is the Chief Financial Officer of the group and has served as CFO for several European companies. He has built and led finance teams for multi-site international groups and has been instrumental in preparing companies for the listed markets.
Richard has considerable experience in designing, implementing and overseeing management reporting systems, with a track record of successfully guiding businesses through transactions.
BA (Oxford); ACMA (CIMA).
Alex Falokun
Technical Director
Alex brings substantial expertise in the Waste-to-Energy and Green Hydrogen sectors, specializing in converting End-of-Life Plastics and other waste materials into commercially viable assets.
At ELTR, Alex oversees both commercial and technical deliverables, including planning, environmental permitting, product certification, plant process design, and CAPEX development.
BEng & MEng Chemical Engineering (Hull).
The Rt Hon Lord Benyon
Advisor — Regulatory
The Rt Hon Lord Benyon was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) from 13 May 2021 to 30 October 2022.
He was Minister of State at DEFRA and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office from November 2023 to July 2024, and previously Minister of State (Minister for Biosecurity, Marine and Rural Affairs) at DEFRA between 30 October 2022 and 14 November 2023.
Lord Benyon was raised to the Peerage in January 2021. Following a career in the army, where he served with the Royal Green Jackets from 1980 to 1985, he qualified as a chartered surveyor and ran a business which included farming, forestry and the management of rural and urban housing.
Sam Walker
Head of Trading
Sam leads the trading function at ELT Recovery, focused on placing circular feedstocks into European markets.
He previously traded renewable feedstocks across Africa and Asia, including supporting Angola's first ISCC-certified UCO trader and collector with EU-exclusive offtake, before returning to the UK to focus on the commercialisation of pyrolysis products into end markets.
Sarah Wills
Head of Operations
Sarah joined ELTR to drive the analytics and research aspects of the group. Her role reinforces the team's commercial and technical requirements.
Her tyre industry knowledge stems from a family-owned re-treading and recovery facility, where R&D was a key focus.
BSc Chemistry and MSc Archaeological Science (UCL).
Khyati Gupta
Analyst and Operations Associate
Supports operations analysis, data reporting and supply-chain coordination across the recovery and trading desks.
Working here
We hire for judgement on plant.
Recovery work rewards people who can read a line — who notice a temperature drift before the sensor alarms and know what it does to output grade three hours later. That instinct is what we recruit for.
We take on process engineers, maintenance technicians and shift operators on permanent contracts, with training funded through to competency. If that sounds like your kind of plant, write to us.