Tomra Sorting Recycling and Stadler UK worked as technology providers for Viridor’s £15.4 million upgrade of its Masons Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) near Ipswich, which took place last year.
Autosort units were installed at the Masons MRF
The two companies worked in collaboration from the early stages of Viridor’s tender enquiry to provide the plant with equipment that met its “specific requirements”.
The upgrade of the plant saw the capacity of the MRF increase from 65,000 tonnes per year to 75,000, and included the installation of 11 optical sorters and 111 conveyers. The plant is now operating at full capacity.
The Masons MRF processes commingled dry recycling from Suffolk county council, which awarded Viridor a renewed ten year recycling contract in 2019.
Viridor recycling director, Derek Edwards, said: “This is by far the largest investment in a UK MRF in recent years. The Masons investment plan has been specifically designed not only to achieve greater capacity but to match the quality of its output with market requirements. The plant now has the same infeed material as before, but the upgrade has resulted in us being able to cope with an additional 10,000 tonnes of material per annum. We are delighted with the performance of the plant and its equipment since the upgrade was completed.”
New equipment
On arrival at the plant, material is processed using new mechanical separation equipment, including a dosing drum, a Stadler ballistic separator, a screening drum, Stadler STT 2000 ballistic separators, overband magnets and eddy current separators.
The material then goes through an air separation process before arriving at the newly installed Tomra Autosort optical sensor-based sorting units.
The three Tomra optical sorters that were in place at before the upgrade, were replaced by 11 new Tomra ‘Autosort’ units.
At the facility, the units have been programmed to sort and recover mixed fibre (cardboard, mixed paper and newspapers and pamphlets), and mixed plastics by polymer into high purity single stream plastics (PET, HDPE, hard plastics, film, pots, tubs and trays).
‘Advanced capabilities’
Steven Walsh, sales engineer at Tomra Sorting Recycling, said that prior to the refurbishment, the site could only sort mixed plastics for further processing at the Rochester facility and was extremely “manual sorting focused”.
He added: “Now though, by integrating TOMRA equipment and benefitting from TOMRA’s technical expertise, the plant’s advanced automated capabilities mean Viridor can capture superior quality materials ready to feed back into the circular economy.”
Benjamin Eule, director at STADLER UK Limited, added that Stadler’s role was to decommission the existing plant and supply and install a “full turnkey solution” for the newly upgraded plant.
He said: “It was one of the quickest turnarounds we’ve ever worked on. It only took around three months from the initial discussion to signing contracts and then, once contracts were signed, we were on-site five months later to undertake the installation. It took two weeks to decommission the plant and everything was brand new other than one Tomra optical sorter which Tomra simply uploaded the latest software onto as it was only a few years old. The installation – including demolition of the old equipment – took 80 days in total.”
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Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment
