The system, which will be able to treat up to 175,000 tonnes of mixed dry recyclables a year, will be operational by Summer 2023. The Material Recovery Facility will be operated by Sherbourne Recycling Limited; the wholly-owned Local Authority company being established to manage the facility on behalf of the eight Partner Councils from the surrounding regions.
Councilor Patricia Hetherton, Cabinet Member for City Services, said: ‘’This facility looks set to be really impressive – a real leader in the UK and in the short term it’s going to help us make sure our waste and recycling service is as efficient as it can be. In the long term, it’s going to enable us to raise our recycling rates. This isn’t just a short-term investment, it’s a long-term investment to ensure a greener future for our city.’’
‘’Machinex employs a sales process that promotes close interaction and collaboration with the customer creating the ability to develop sincere partnerships with them. This approach applied during the recent process allowed Machinex to accurately understand the needs of the project team, and therefore design the ideal future-proofed facility. We have a team of experts who will manage this project from engineering right through the commissioning period, with the added commitment of local ongoing support for the client during operation’’ says Ian Smith, UK Business Development Manager at Machinex.
Grant McKelvie, Project Director, and Coventry City Council Commercial Business Director said: ‘’We are really pleased to have reached this important milestone. Machinex approached this project with a clear vision for an MRF of the future. They understood our vision for a facility that will allow the project partners to effectively manage their risks in relation to their legislative responsibilities, with the confidence their recyclate is being handled in the most efficient and effective manner considering likely changes in the UK waste sector. We anticipate the new facility will push recycling performance in the region. This has been an exciting project to be involved in, and I look forward to seeing how it continues to develop.’’
Machinex’s design utilizes 14 SamurAITM sorting robots and 14 optical sorters (including 13 MACH Hyspec® optical sorters), within an overall solution to provide, what is certainly a highly automated and innovative state-of-the-art facility. It will also be one of, if not the first, facility in the world that integrates, at this scale, artificial intelligence at the core of its system, allowing real-time interconnectivity between the main sorting equipment.
The system will be processing throughput of 47.5 tonnes per hour of recyclables with an extremely minimized level of manpower, only five manual sorters. Machinex will also provide a semi-automatic
sampling line to significantly reduce the manpower requirements to execute the daily auditing tasks.
‘’This will be a great achievement for Machinex; the culmination of years of research, development, and hard work in incorporating artificial intelligence at the heart of our sorting solutions. This means that the operations management of this facility will be based, among other things, on the data collected by the AI. The industry has been talking for a few years about the MRF of the future, but this time we can really say that we will make it happen. This will be a game-changer and a loud statement within the market ‘’, comments Jonathan Ménard, Executive VP of Sales and Strategic Positioning at Machinex.
This technologically advanced solution will mean the Coventry MRF will be able to deliver higher purity levels of recyclable materials, as well as the flexibility to ensure that it can react to legislation and consumer habits and the introduction of new and changing material steams, such as the separation of the low-grade plastic.
