Paper recovery specialist SCA Recycling officially opened a £15 million materials recycling facility in Southampton yesterday (October 13) - representing its first move into handling multi-material streams.

The facility, at Hounsdown Business Park in Totton, is designed to sort up to 200,000 tonnes-a-year of paper, plastics, metals and, importantly, glass, from both households and businesses.

Former athlete Roger Black (left) and Ken Stevens, managing director of SCA Recycling (right) at the opening of the new MRF

SCA claim that it is the first MRF in the country to use optical sorting equipment produced by American firm NRT. These units use high-speed near infrared technology to identify and sort different types of plastics and have parallel detection and ejection points to capture as much material as possible.

State-of-the-art disc screen technology has also been supplied by Oregon-based manufacturer Bulk Handling Systems (BHS).

Conducting the opening ceremony, former 400m runner and Olympic silver medallist Roger Black said: "SCA Recycling's new MRF epitomises the efforts of the UK to improve the quality and quantity of recycling. Helping the South to recycle can only be a good thing!"

"What this means for the region is two-fold. Firstly the new facility will set new standards for recycling up and down the country, but equally important is the new jobs that the facility will create for the local community as such an important time," he added.

MRF

The 124,000 square foot building is capable of operating on a 24-hour, seven day a week basis and, after five weeks of operation, the MRF is already handling the equivalent of about 40,000 tonnes of material a year. It is hoped that up to 80 new jobs will eventually be created by the development.

The MRF is already handling the equivalent of 40,000 tonnes of material a year

At present, household material in the plant is being sourced from waste contractors around London and Surrey while commercial and industrial material is sourced locally. While no contracts are currently in place with councils, SCA said that it was still early days and it was "tendering all the time".

Once material is delivered to the facility, it is deposited in a reception hall from where it is lifted up by a wheeled loader and deposited into a BHS metering bin and metering drum onto an inclined conveyor. This allows the material to be fed into the system at a regular pace. There is also a bag breaker for material which comes in bags.

The material is then taken by an incline conveyor to a pre-sort cabin where large items and elements such as textiles and film which may damage the MRF screens are removed by hand. Glass is taken off and screened into 10-50mm particles which are sent for remelt to Berryman's and Recresco and sub 50mm particles are sent for aggregates. SCA claims that it is currently getting "very good feedback" from these customers.

Kevin Thomas, SCA business development manager, said that having glass in the mix had not been a concern in terms of contaminating the other recyclables, commenting: "One of the reasons we chose the BHS system is that is has the best glass clean-up system of any MRF in the market place and we think it will continue to perform well."

Plastics are sorted using optical sorting technology from US firm NRT

A system of screens and separators then separate out cardboard, newspapers and magazines, smaller fibre, remaining glass, mixed fibre, steel cans, plastic bottles and mixed plastics and finally an eddy current separator is used to pick out aluminium material. Cardboard is sent to SCA mills in Europe, paper goes to UK mills including Aylesford, plastics are being sent to recycling firm Moore's Plastics, aluminium is being sent to Novelis and steel cans to Corus.

The average reject rate for the plant is currently running at around 6%, which is largely made up of film and plastic bags, and SCA says it expects this to rise to around 8%.

While this may sound like a high reject rate, Mr Thomas said that he believed it proved the quality of the end product.

He said: "Our view is that if you are getting a 2-3% reject rate that material must be getting into the product."

Ken Stevens, managing director of SCA Recycling, said: "This is a fantastic day for SCA Recycling and for Hampshire. Our plant utilises the best available technology to produce material to the highest quality standards. We aim to operate the facility to the highest operational and environmental standards with transparency and sustainability at the core of our offer.

"With our long-standing experience in the recovered paper sector this is an unprecedented opportunity to develop quality partnerships with both new and existing customers," he added.