Trimetal adds to its metal sorting capabilities

According to Tomra, the metals recycling company has become one of the first to test this next-generation color sorting technology under real-world conditions, achieving record purity for stainless steel, eliminating manual sorting and gaining the flexibility to process other materials such as copper, brass and electronic boards.

Saint-Etienne, France-based Trimetal, founded in 2019, specializes in processing and recovering ferrous and nonferrous metals from complex waste streams, including refuse-derived fuel, glass, wood, incineration residues, mattress springs, pulper ropes and more. With up to 14 employees, the company generated approximately 4 million euros in revenue in 2024, with a goal to double that figure as early as next year.

Trimetal aimed to achieve a stainless steel fraction with more than 98 percent purity—without relying on manual sorting. Producing consistent, homogeneous and clean output was a major challenge for the company to ensure competitiveness and profitability.

Beyond stainless steel, the company’s strategic goal is to secure access to critical and strategic metals in Europe—such as copper, brass and even precious metals—to prevent scarcity caused by large-scale exports and to ensure full traceability in the recycling process.

In 2025, Trimetal chose to install Finder Color, Germany-based Tomra Recycling’s latest innovation, which it describes as a high-precision color sorting system that supports a wide range of metal tasks, such as recovering copper and brass from heavy metals, separating printed circuit boards from e-scrap and cleaning stainless steel. It combines an RGB, or color, camera with artificial intelligence (AI) to detect, separate and sort each particle, even if they overlap or match the conveyor belt’s color. Sorting is based on color, size and shape.

At Trimetal, the Finder Color, which Tomra Recycling introduced earlier this year, is the core of the optical sorting process, complementing the Tomra Finder unit that was installed in 2021 and operates on a separate line with larger grain sizes to sort all metals and stainless steel. The other equipment—shredding, screening and magnetic and eddy current separation—creates ideal material conditions to support high-performance sorting, Tomra says. The line’s configuration allows for the processing of mixed materials that are typically considered difficult, supplying end users within France and across the EU. The electromagnetic (EM) sensor that Trimetal chose to integrate into the Tomra system further reduces plastic contamination by recovering all metals and enhancing precision in cables and stainless sorting, the supplier adds.

In addition to stainless steel, the system allows Trimetal to recover other high-value metals, enabling the company to adapt to future demands and seize new business opportunities, Tomra says.

With the installation of the Tomra Finder Color, Trimetal has reached purity targets, increased throughput to handle higher volumes, reduced manual sorting, maintained consistently stable performance and unlocked new business opportunities.

"With Finder Color, we reach over 98 percent purity for stainless steel,” Trimetal co-founder and CEO Thomas Santucci says. "We sort faster, process higher volumes and save time every day. Our role goes beyond simple collection: We recover, refine and reintegrate critical metals into European supply chains with stable, traceable performance.

“We’re extremely satisfied with both the outcome and our collaboration with Tomra, whose top-tier consultation and technology were instrumental to our success."

Tomra says its innovation aligns with recyclers’ needs, maximizing metal recovery, improving sorting efficiency and supporting business objectives.

“Trimetal wanted a powerful yet flexible sorting system that reliably delivers high purity and throughput across various material streams while adapting to future business needs,” says Damian Barnes, area sales manager, Metals, at Tomra Recycling. “Our new Finder Color, built on Tomra’s 25 years of experience in color sorting, is the perfect solution for their plant. We have worked alongside Trimetal to fine-tune, train and ensure optimal results, and together, we’ve pushed the boundaries of color sorting today.”

Finder Color offers flexibility, allowing seamless configuration in batch or continuous flow mode and rapid switching between material fractions. It can switch between sorting tasks without reconfiguring the line.

With a compact design, Finder Color can be used as a standalone machine or integrated into existing lines, offering an economical solution for extracting nonferrous copper, zinc, magnesium, stainless steel and brass from heavy metals.

“With its ability to sort material by color, size and shape and quickly switch between different fractions, we expect wide adoption of this technology among recyclers currently relying on recovery by color in their processes,” says Giuseppe Granara, area manager, Metals Segment, for Tomra Recycling.

Granara expects Trimetal’s success to be replicated by metals and electronics recyclers in North America.

“The versatile solution provided by Finder Color will benefit all metal recyclers—those running shredders, XRT [X-ray transmission] technology and eddy current owners and aluminum processors," he says. "Plus, it achieves high-level purification of printed circuit boards by color from mixed e-scrap as a last-step recovery solution."

Finder Color and other Tomra Recycling metals recovery solutions are available in North America through Wendt Corp. of Buffalo, New York. Recyclers are encouraged to test their materials using Wendt’s new Test Center for metals.