Casepak Holds Grand Opening for UK MRF

Casepak  celebrated the grand opening of its $33 million material recovery facility (MRF) in Leicester, U.K. Jan. 16, 2012, with presentations and tours of the facility, which features a custom-designed sorting system engineered, manufactured and installed by Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Ore.

U.K. Environment Minister Lord Taylor of Holbeach was a guest of honor at the event.

“I’m delighted to be able to come and open this new recycling plant,” a press release from Casepak quotes the minister as saying. “There are huge business opportunities in the growing recycling industry and Casepak’s £21 million (USD$33 million) investment in this new plant is already showing rewards. This facility is not just good for the environment, with 150,000 metric tons of waste not going to landfill, it is also a significant boost to the local economy creating 100 new jobs in the area.”
 

Mark Smith, managing director at Casepak, a leading U.K. waste management company, said, “This is a major milestone for Casepak.” He added, “Since the MRF became operational in September, we have already secured contracts to manage several local councils’ recyclable material streams and we aim to do more of the same in 2012.”
 

According to a press release issued by BHS, Casepak is able to process material at rates significantly beyond the design capacity of 26 metric tons per hour. “As soon as its first week of operation, the system was exceeding design capacity  while delivering high recovery rates of more than 95 percent of the available commodities at extremely high purity levels,” BHS states in a press release. 
 

Production was recently boosted with the addition of a second shift.
 

 “Our new MRF has been developed to meet the demands of changing collection systems at the same time ensuring we produce a quality end product,” says Kevin Thomas, director – MRF operations. “This is not a waste treatment facility—it’s a production process for essential materials; and, as with any production process, quality is the key. Our system is based on a combination of robust screen and optical sorting technology to achieve the best possible quality output.”
 

Casepak officials say the new facility is the first in the U.K. to incorporate screening technology to recognize and separate the highly compacted plastic and metal food packaging found in household recycling collections.

“We are the first MRF to import this technology from the USA,” Thomas says. “It ensures that items such as small plastic bottles and yogurt cups that are easily squashed during the collection process are identified and separated, ensuring that they are recovered and retain their resource value.”
 

The MRF also features the patented BHS De-Inking Screen®, a mixed fiber optical unit, a film-handling system and a full optical container line for plastics recovery. 
 

Casepak was formed in 1973 as a family business. The company sorts, processes and trades more than 145,000 metric tons of source-segregated paper, card and plastics each year through its collection and processing facility in Enderby, Leicester. Combined the company’s facilities can currently process 300,000 metric tons of recycled materials per year. 
 

BHS is a supplier of processing systems for the solid waste, recycling, wood products/compost and waste-to-energy industries.