55
2026
Application
then built one of the very first heavy media,
sink and float separation systems. This non-
ferrous metal recovery system was very suc-
cessful and led to Newell owning and operat-
ing eight of these plants in America, France
and Germany.
Newell continued to operate and sell
shredding plants, with continually more
sophisticated separation systems. During
the 1990s, Newell owned Eumet in Frank-
furt, matched a government grant of 500
000 Deutschmarks, and conducted the first
experiments with laser spectrometry. Com-
puter speeds allowed about 150 decisions per
second, which proved to be uneconomical at
that time.
Today, computers used for this purpose
can make more than 10 000 decisions per
second, which is allowing the development
of sensor systems that are able to separate
metals by alloy.
Growing global reach
Also during the 1990s, Newell Magnet-
ics was formed in the UK and manufactured
early design eddy current separation systems.
This plant was later sold to Master Magnets,
which has since been acquired by Bunting.
Newell sold more than 40 shredders in
Japan before 2000 and almost every plant in-
cluded a Fuji Newell pre-shredder.
Newell then sold more than 10 pre-shred-
ders in the USA and Europe, all of which
were copied and became popular for install-
ing with smaller shredders. Recently, Newell
has improved the design so that it is more
efficient.
Newell has 10 pre-shredders running in
China with 50, 100 and 150 tonnes per hour
capacity. Every effective rip type pre-shredder
in the world is built based on Newell designs.
For many years, Newell-owned shredding
plants were processing around one million
tonnes per year, providing motivation to
Newell to improve the shredding and sepa-
ration processes.
At the shredder, there has been an empha-
sis on computer controls to increase tonnes
per hour, better design of wear parts to re-
duce costs, and gathering management data
that facilitates a philosophy of continual im-
provement.
Continuous innovation
For the separation systems, Newell was
motivated to experiment and to continually
improve the technology that provides for the
greatest value recovered from non-ferrous
metals.
Newell has been a leader in shredding and
separation technology from the beginning
and continues today, with separations by air,
magnets, eddy current separators, sorting,
gravity and very new design air table separa-
tions that can separate materials with small
differences to specific density. Newell is con-
tinually experimenting and developing more
efficient equipment.
More than half of all the shredding plants
were either built by Newell or licensed by
Newell. In China, the world’s largest steel
making country, Newell has supplied 75
shredders, with more than 60% of the in-
stalled shredding capacity.
A number of these Newell China shred-
ders are producing more than one million
tonnes and one delivered more than 1.5 mil-
lion tonnes of shredded steel output last year.
www.newellequip.com
www.newellequip.eu
Scott Newell III is eager to pursue innovation, building on the legacy of Alton Newell Sr. and Scott
Newell Jr
Newell’s powerful pre-shredder.
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