Deal signed for 1.5m CRT glass recycling plant

With support from the Welsh Assembly, the plant is now being fitted out, to be fully operational within about four months, helping electronics producers or their compliance schemes cope with their new recycling requirements under the WEEE Regulations.

Agreements 

This week saw chairman and managing director of CRT Recycling, David Burton, and the managing director of RTG, André Assmann, who is also a Director of CRT Recycling, signing lease agreements for the development of the project.

It will mean the company will be able to accept up to 25,000 tonnes of broken cathode ray tube glass a year from producer compliance schemes or other WEEE recyclers. The plant will use machinery to separate leaded funnel glass from screen glass for reprocessing.

Mr Burton, who is also a director of the business-to-business compliance scheme B2B Compliance, told letsrecycle.com that separated glass would then be sold via RTG's connections on the global market, to be turned back into new cathode ray tubes.

CRT Recycling believes the introduction of its process in the UK could change the nature of TV treatment in this country, which often sees CRT splitting machines used to separate the different types of glass before it is crushed.

Costs

Mr Burton said: “By treating CRT glass through our lower cost industrial production process our suppliers can avoid the capital and operating costs, and the production /market bottlenecks of using splitting machines – good news for producer compliance schemes – a number of whom are seeking to contract directly with us for the supply of glass.”

The CRT Recycling managing director added that his system meant that any waste handling organisation – including those from the social enterprise sector – could provide television disassembly services to producer compliance schemes without needing high capital costs. “We will provide that vital link of quality secondary raw material preparation and end markets – removing risks for disassemblers and Producer Schemes,” he said.

RTG is based near Wernigerode in central Germany and began developing its CRT recycling processes in mid-1994. The company hopes that the CRT Recycling partnership will help it to break into the Northern European markets.

Mr Assmann said: “By supporting this investment in the UK we can provide material processing facilities to the UK, Irish and Scandinavian markets with our output materials going overseas from a strategic location in North Wales. Our 10 year record of supplying high tonnages of quality CRT glass to manufacturing plants around the world holds us head and shoulders above other emerging players.”