
Germany-based Stadler has completed commissioning a new beverage packaging sorting plant it designed and built for Dansk Retursystem in Taastrup, Denmark. Full handover is scheduled for April, at the end of the final one-month trial period.
The inauguration ceremony for the plant, held March 10, was hosted by Dansk Retursystem Chief Executive Officer Lars Krejberg Petersen and attended by guests of honor Frederick, crown prince of Denmark and Lea Wermelin, minister of the environment.
The plant will process the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and aluminum cans collected throughout the country via the return system, producing bales for recycling. With a capacity of 110 cubic meters per hour, it is expected to process around 55 percent of the country’s cans and PET bottles, for a total of more than 25,000 metric tons of material per year, working 16 hours per day on two shifts, for 300 days per year.
Dansk Retursystem is a nonprofit company owned by Danish breweries and regulated by statutory order under the Danish Environmental Protection Act. Founded in 2000, it operates the country’s deposit and return system for beverage bottles and cans with the aim of recycling as many as possible into new ones. All profits are reinvested into the company to improve the system and ensure that the high return rate is maintained or raised even further. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency monitors Dansk Retursystem’s activities and periodically reviews its operation to renew its exclusive right to operate the country’s deposit and return system for a new term.
Dansk Retursystem collects bottles and cans from reverse vending machines found at 3,000 stores across the country, from retailers, shops, offices, cafés and restaurants, or through the “pantstation” deposit return banks located in 12 cities. It sorts all the collected packaging into glass and plastic bottles and aluminium cans, which are recycled into new packaging. The result of this system is that 9 out of 10 bottles marked for deposit are returned and recycled, with very little waste in the process.
Efficient and precise sorting of the collected bottles and cans is crucial to the success of Dansk Retursystem’s operation, so the company opted for a Europe-wide tender process to select the supplier for its new plant.
Having won the tender, Stadler designed the plant and started assembly in Nov. 2019.
The plant uses magnetic separation to sort the aluminum cans, ejecting any ferrous materials, and near-infrared (NIR) technology for the PET bottles. Also part of the process is the removal of loose labels. At the end of the line, balers compact the aluminum cans on one output line and PET bottles on the other.
The project presented particular challenges because of the high level of automatization and flexibility of the plant, which required Stadler’s ingenuity to develop a tailored solution. Armin Winand, joint project manager explains: “This is a fully automated sorting plant with a high throughput. We addressed this with extra-large intermediate bunkers with a capacity up to 240 cubic meters at various stages of the process and a similarly oversized bunker conveyor 20 meters long, 4 meters wide and 4 meters high. This is the biggest Stadler has ever designed and built. At the end of the process, the aluminum and PET bales are transported automatically into the storage area.”
“The plant also stands out for its extreme flexibility, which allows the customer to select different operating modes according to requirements,” adds Urban Konzic of the sales team. “Also, management of the unloading of incoming materials is automated, with the Stadler system indicating to the delivery truck drivers in which of five bunkers they should unload.”
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