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Helping Amey drive recycling targets in Gloucester City

Introduced to divert a further 2,000 tonnes of waste from landfill each year.

Amey, the waste and recycling contractor for Gloucester City Council, is operating a new waste sorting and baling solution at its depot in Gloucester, designed and installed by recycling machinery specialist Middleton Engineering. This follows a new kerbside collection regime to drive recycling targets across the city to 50% and reduce costs in line with budget pressures.

It forms part of an overall strategy with Gloucester City Council to deliver significant cost savings and to divert a further 2,000 tonnes of waste from landfill each year. Amey’s waste and recycling contract with Gloucester City Council runs until 2022 with an option to extend to 2027.

Selected following a competitive tender, Middleton Engineering was responsible for all aspects of the bespoke solution including, design, fabrication, installation and commissioning. This comprises a series of chain and slider bed conveyors, five in total, to transport material through a number of overhead automated sorting processes.

These include Overband and Head Drum magnets to re-move ferrous metals, an Eddy Current Separator and finally a state-of-the-art Steinert UniSort PR optical sorter, for separating a range of plastics.

Sorted material drops into infeed bays constructed in steel, each measuring 5.5m wide by 7.5m deep and 3m high. Access gantries and walkways, SCADA controls to fully integrate each element of the system and lock off emergency stop switches and safety pulls, complete the solution.

Malcolm Cox – Operations Manager for Amey said “The new sorting system and baler have been running extremely well. Middletons have been a perfect partner, completing the project inside a tough ten week window to deliver a system that gives us added flexibility and capacity to increase recycling across the city and maximise income streams.”

Sorted materials are then loaded into a new SCAPA ME2R80 twin ram baler, incorporating a wire tying head.

Middleton Engineering has been supplying Amey with balers since 2005 and the latest plant, designed to process material at three tonnes an hour and sized to optimise available space at the Gloucester depot, upgrades earlier ME70 and ME80 machines.

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