July 8, 2011 – Machinex proudly announces its presence in the United Kingdom with a state of the art Material Recovery & Recycling Facility (MRRF) for the paper manufacturing giant UPM. Located in North Wales, The single-stream MRRF has been built adjacent to the UPM Shotton paper mill in to bring efficiencies to the UPM operation.
The Machinex sorting system is designed to process over 270 000 tonnes a year of recyclables from comingled collections from local authorities in the UK. This includes: papers, cartons, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal containers. The MRRF, in order to complement the existing paper-making operations at UPM’s Shotton site which presently recovers 640, 000 tonnes of waste paper and recycles this into newsprint each year, will derive approximately 120,000 tonnes high quality recovered paper from the new MRRF. This recovered paper issent from the MRF to the paper mill through a tunnel connecting the two buildings.
“We believe UPM appointed Machinex for the project because of our expert capability, flexibility, innovative design, but mostly, because we took the time to discuss their real requirements. We brought them a different approach, outside the box,” said Pierre Paré, CEO of Machinex Group.
High Quality Recovered Paper
The paper manufacturer, UPM, decided to move into the MRF sector to secure a long term supply of high quality recovered paper feedstock for their paper mill. This project was also a challenge for UPM to demonstrate to the paper industry, that it is possible to obtain 99% fibre purity from the comingled collection with a high tonnage and minimum number of employees.
“We visited Machinex reference sites wich were delivering close to UPM expectations for paper recovery using traditional mechanical techniques,” says David Green, Technical Director at UPM Shotton. We were therefore confident that, with the addition of optical sorting equipment, they would be able to achieve 90% recovery of paper and the required 99% purity rates for the recovered fibre. ”
Machinex has risen to the challenge brilliantly by delivering a flexible and highly automated sorting system. “Because the paper feedstock was a very important element for UPM, we proposed two independent fibre sorting lines which will allow maintenance work on one of the two lines without stopping production. This concept can also be applied to the container sorting line should it require maintenance. The fibre line can still operate and feed the paper mill,” explained Jonathan Ménard, Project Director at Machinex. “The glass has to be removed from the system at the beginning because of its abrasive properties,” says Mr Ménard. The entire system is build with the very latest recycling technology equipment such as ten TITECH optical sorting units for fibres and containers, plastic film air capture system, magnetic separators, disc screen separators, a number of conveyors and other equipment design and built by Machinex.
“We often see the term ‛state-of-the-art’ but we think we have the best solution, both in terms of construction and in how it is configured. It is the most modern equipment and the best configured,” says Craig Robinson, head of recovered paper sourcing for UPM in the UK & Ireland.
The UPM Shotton MRRF, started operation in April 2011, and is the second Machinex major project in the UK. A third MRF will be built in Kettering, and is presently being manufactured and slated to start up at the end of 2011.