Sims reaches new level in plastics recycling
20/Oct/2011
Sims Recycling Solutions is proud to announce it has taken plastics recycling to its highest level in the company’s history.
Sims takes plastics recycling to its highest level in company’s history.
The new technology it has developed will enable the company to further refine plastics for a greater number of end uses.
The new, cutting-edge technological solution to plastics recycling has been under development for the past five years and has been trialled at the company’s electronics recycling facility in Newport, Gwent. For the first time, this technology expertise will be implemented on a large scale at Sims’ new plastics recycling centre in Billingham, near Middlesbrough.
The decision to locate the new technology to a bespoke advanced plastics recycling centre came after the company reached a tipping point in the volumes of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) it processes, which made the new plastics centre economically viable. The Billingham facility will meet demand from the significantly increased volumes of material entering Sims’ recycling sites each year and has been designed to cope with even larger volumes in future.
“The innovative technology developed here at Sims combined with the higher volumes of material entering the process, made the concept of the Billingham centre possible” said Biagio Adragna, Country Manager for Sims Recycling Solutions, UK. “The volume of plastics entering our process has reached a point that has allowed us to invest in chasing and refining different polymers in suitable volumes for sustainable markets. The new process can create a number of different polymers which are usable for compounding.
“The other advantage is that we can now chase complex polymer streams from other sources. Our process is able to cope with a very complex set of plastics. Valuable plastics can be recovered from electronics or other material streams, either post-consumer, post-industrial or post-car shredder residues. We are now working with clients to process from these sources and have created extra capacity to allow us to provide an exciting recycled plastics solution to Europe’s manufacturing industry.”
The company intends to offer its solution to recycle complex plastics to both post-industrial and post-consumer markets, maximising the use of recyclable plastics. The multi-million pound project begins full-scale production at the end of October. Biagio concluded: “The new facility at Billingham will process around 70,000 tonnes of plastics per year. It is a fantastic solution, combining a financially stable investment with an environmentally friendly way of recycling and reusing hitherto unrecyclable plastics.”