Stadler UK, a subsidiary of German-based Stadler Anlagenbau GmbH, has led a £15.4 million project to upgrade the Viridor-operated Masons Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) near Ipswich in Suffolk.
Recycling Magazine reports that the modernisation of the MRF facility is part of a Viridor-Suffolk County Council contract renewal. Viridor runs the MRF on behalf of the Suffolk Waste Partnership.
Viridor says the upgrade will allow it to increase capacity from 65,000 metric tons per year to 75,000. The facility is now operating at full capacity and at what the equipment firms call optimum processing levels.
Viridor specified Tomra Sorting Recycling’s sensor-based sorting technology in the 2019 tender documentation for the upgrade. Stadler and Tomra, having already worked on several projects together, say they have worked in close collaboration from the initial stages of the project to ensure the facility and equipment meets Viridor’s specifications.
The Mason MRF’s infeed material is dry mixed recyclables (except for glass) from Suffolk County Council. The material is processed initially using new mechanical separation equipment, including a dosing drum, a Stadler PPK ballistic separator, a screening drum, Stadler STT 2000 ballistic separators, overhead magnets and eddy current separators.
After mechanical separation, the material goes through an air-separation process before reaching the newly installed Tomra AutoSort optical sensor-based sorting units.
Before the upgrade project, the MRF had three Tomra optical sorters in place, which have been replaced by 11 new AutoSort units.
These new units are programmed to sort and recover mixed fibre from cardboard, mixed paper, newspaper and pamphlets, and sort mixed plastics by polymer into different streams of plastic, including polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), hard plastics, films, pots, tubs and trays.
Derek Edwards, Viridor’s recycling director, said: “This is by far the largest investment in a U.K. MRF in recent years.
“The Masons investment plan has been specifically designed not only to achieve greater capacity but to match its output quality with market requirements. The plant has the same infeed material as before, but can now cope with an additional 10,000 metric tons of material per annum.”
Tomra sales engineer Steven Walsh said the firm was ‘delighted’ to work with Stadler on the upgrade. He explained that prior to the upgrade, it was only possible for the facility to sort plastics that then required further processing at a plastics recycling facility (PRF), which was focused on manual sorting.
“Masons is among the most highly automated plants in the U.K., [and] Viridor can capture superior quality materials ready to feed back into the circular economy,” he said.
Benjamin Eule, a director at Stadler UK, commented, “Our role was to decommission the existing plant and supply and install a full turnkey solution for the newly upgraded plant. It was one of the quickest turnarounds we’ve ever worked on.”
The installation, which he explained included demolition of the old equipment, took 80 days in total. It included the installation of new steelwork, conveyors and all electrical components required for the process.
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