The plant can process 30,000 tonnes a year of PET and HDPE plastic bottles into various polymers for use in the sheeting and packaging industries, through a separate sorting and washing plant.
Intercontinental general manager Lee Clayton told letsrecycle.com: “It has been commissioned and the plant is up and running and is taking material in from local authorities and waste management companies. We are at full capacity now.”
At the Skelmersdale plant, a feeder and conveyor lead to a sorting house where large contaminants are removed. Material is then passed through magnetic and eddy current separators to recover metals.
Material is then transferred to a Stadler STT 2000 twin-deck ballistic separator, which sorts plastic bottles through the way they bounce from contaminants such as paper, card, film and glass. The plant was supplied by Wilson Recycling Machinery Ltd.
After this, bottles are washed washed and granulated into a final product. The plant consists of two processing lines, which deliver about two tonnes of clean, recycled polymer per hour.
Reprocessed
Ravi Chanrai, IRL managing director, said that he hoped the plant – which is one of the first of many planned new plastics recycling facilities for the UK- would encourage more plastic to be reprocessed in this country.
He said: “We are passionate about what we do and have found that exported material is not always separated properly making a lower category end product. Recycling plants close to collection and bring points reduce the carbon footprint of the recycled material, which, in our view, makes economic and environmental sense.”
He added: “We believe everyone in the UK wants to recycle but they want to know the materials they diligently save are being used to produce useful products rather than being exported.”
Mr Ravi pointed out that there needed to be increasing incentive for manufacturers to use recycled material, if the market was to grow.
He said: “The plastics recycling market can only increase as manufacturers come under even greater pressure to use more recycle materials.”
Subscribe for free