New Material Recovery Facility From Casepak

21 February 2011

The building of a new Material Recovery Facility (MRF) is in progress with Casepak announcing its development in Leicester. The facility, which is on its way to becoming fully operational by the end of 2011, will have the capacity to process 150,000 tonnes of mixed dry recyclables annually.

A noteworthy feature of this facility is undoubtedly the combined use of automated technology and intensive manual quality control that sorts mixed collections of paper, card, plastic, metal and glass and aims to recover 95 percent of the material processed as a resource.

The facility will also integrate latest plant developments including specialist screening for highly compacted materials; additional fibre screens to produce high quality newspapers and magazines; and dedicated optical sorting technology to produce a high quality mixed paper fraction.

The recovered materials will be sold to UK reprocessors for manufacturing new products and materials.

George Smith, Chairman of Casepak, said: "This is an exciting time for Casepak. We've been recycling plastics now for the last decade and developing a MRF with full multi-material capacity was the natural next step."

He added: "This new facility will allow us to provide our customers with a wider waste and resource management solution for both the municipal and commercial and industrial (C&I) sectors. Providing additional capacity is essential if local authorities are to increase household recycling rates above 50 percent to meet existing legislation."

George anticipates that the much awaited Waste Review will stress the need to propel recycling in the C&I sector, which will necessitate increased sorting and processing capacity. The facility reportedly required an investment of £21m and will initially employ 50 people, which will duly increase to an approximate number of 100 employees as the plant recovers more material.

Krishna Buddhiraju