TOMRA Sorting partners with Monoworld Recycling

The new 10-tonne-per-hour PRF, which is based on a 9-acre site with more than 140,000 square feet of warehouse space, was built by the Italian AMUT Group. Officially opened in January 2016, the plant encompasses a postconsumer mixed plastics recycling facility, as well as wash and granulation lines. The plant has the capacity to recover up to 100,000 tonnes of recyclate annually. A total of 120 new jobs have been created at the site, the company says. 

 

The PRF is equipped with TOMRA’s sensor-based sorting technology, along with Autosort units installed to separate the mixed baled plastics into polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP), film, paper, steel and aluminum. The PRF is capable of handling postconsumer pots, tubs, trays and mixed bottles, with TOMRA’s technology able to sort black plastics from the postconsumer trays, according to the company. The black material is processed further downstream.   

 

The recovered HDPE and PP materials are used in-house in the hot wash plant, producing high-quality washed flakes that are supplied back to extrusion, injection molding and pipe applications in the U.K. and in Europe. The other recovered materials, including natural and jazz (mixed colour) PE and PET, are sold to customers throughout the U.K. and Europe. 

 

“This is a major step forward, enabling us to recover a significantly higher tonnage of material that can be processed in-house and opening up new market opportunities for the sale of recycled material in the U.K. and Europe, thanks to the enhanced material quality grades being produced,” Monoworld Commercial Director Nick Ruparelia says. 

 

“Nick and his team took the right approach with this plant, working closely with TOMRA and AMUT from the very early design stages,” says Steve Almond, sales engineer at TOMRA. “They sent different grades of waste material to TOMRA’s test centre in Germany in order to design a plant that is capable of achieving the required quality and throughput, as well as producing the right quality of waste for use in their own plastics washing plant. We’re delighted to be part of this fantastic new facility, which is breaking new ground for plastics recycling in the UK.”