A new plastic wash and recycling facility for contaminated plastic has been opened by PPF Environmental Services.
The 4,000 tonne per year facility will take contaminated HDPE and PP rigid packaging and will process it into a high standard granulate.
PPF Environmental owner Paul Woodhead told SCM news: “We’ve bought a system from Rotajet that means we take plastics of little value that are destined to either go abroad or be sent to landfill.
“The rigid HDPE and or PP packaging such as contaminated food buckets or chemically contaminated materials is what we are after such as HDPE drums, kegs, containers and IBCs (Intermediate Bulk Containers) and then this goes through our process.”
The material is given a pre-preparation clean, although the company ideally would like it supplied pre-prepared, before it goes through a shredder to produce a 40mm shred. It is then washed in an Archimedes screw-type system using a seaweed-based cleaning agent from British company Sea-Chem. It is then dried and granulated into 10 to 12mm granulate before being sold into the UK wholesale market or to companies such as Iplas for use in furniture. The company is seeking other markets as well as feedstock for the material.
Paul Woodhead added: “This is a completely new facility in the centre of Birmingham near to Birmingham City football club. We put the plant in during July, and have been commissioning it then and November is the first month we have been operating fully.”
This is the second company to recently open a plastics recycling facility in Birmingham with Recycled Polymers recently opening a facility that can process PP, PS, HDPE and ABS.
