The plant, in Hirwaun, Wales was opened by Alby Davies, mayor of Rhondda Cynon Taff county borough council, Ray Chaney, European Vice President for Citiraya and Tom Meney, the company's vice president for marketing.
Citiraya's plant will be using laser technology from technology producer Proventia. The Finnish company have only supplied this equipment to three sites world wide, one in Germany and a second UK site based in Perth, Scotland.
Over 50% of the CRT is made up of glass so Citiraya wanted to ensure that it retrieved as much of the glass as possible. According to Citiraya project manager Jim McDowall the technology allows Citiraya to recover almost all of the glass from a CRT. The glass is sent to recyclers in the UK and Europe from the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Germany and a local company in Cardiff.
He said: “Obviously there will be small fragments that will be lost during the cleaning process but this is a very small percentage of the glass included, the rest is recycled.”
There is the potential for this final percentage of glass to be recycled. The company collects the dust fragments during the process. These can be sorted and the glass fragments removed and collected with the rest of the glass.
Mr Meney said: “Once this site is completely up and running we will be looking to make small improvements where needed. One of those changes will be looking into the sorting of the dust fragments.”
Second phase
Currently the plant has one CRT recycling line but a second is set to be installed in mid 2005. This will bring the sites capacity up to 500,000 CRTs per annum.
Citiraya uses a computer controlled system to ensure that when a delivery is made they can account for the entire batch. The system logs the weight of the delivery when it comes in and the recycled material is weighed at each stage of the process to ensure that what came in goes out again, this includes the pallet.
The company has had a presence in the UK for four years with its site in Irvine, Scotland. The investment in Wales has been backed by the Welsh Assembly Government and the Welsh Development Agency.
CRT market
There have been concerns raised by some in the industry that CRT recyclers may have set up too early with companies and local authorities not yet obligated to recycle their Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. But Citiraya has said that it believes now is the perfect time to open its site.
Mr McDowall said: “A lot of companies know what is going to happen when the WEEE Directive comes in and they are looking for partnerships now. These companies are very pro active and they don't want to wait until the Directive comes in before setting arranging for their waste to be recycled, that is why we decided to open the plant now rather than wait six months to a year.
“According to an ICER report there are 10 million CRTs around in 2005 and plenty of these will be going for recycling. With the WEEE Directive and less space available in hazardous waste sites we believe there will be a huge amount of CRTs that will need to be recycled,” he added.
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