Visy opens MRF in New Zealand

Archiv – Prominent Australian recycling company Visy has opened one of the southern hemisphere’s most advanced recycling operations – a A$ 21.9 million materials recovery facility (MRF) in New Zealand. Located in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga, the MRF will serve the city councils of both Auckland and Manukau which represent some 773 000 people, or almost 20% of the country’s total population.Australia / New Zealand | Prominent Australian recycling company Visy has opened one of the southern hemisphere’s most advanced recycling operations – a A$ 21.9 million materials recovery facility (MRF) in New Zealand. Located in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga, the MRF will serve the city councils of both Auckland and Manukau which represent some 773 000 people, or almost 20% of the country’s total population.
The company says the facility uses the latest technology – ’outclassing anything that is in Australia’ – and represents a key component of the bid to increase recycling rates by 15-25%. Recycling volumes spiked 27% in the first few days of the new service, which includes dedicated wheelie bins for co-mingled collections.
At the new MRF, material passes through a series of automated screen, magnet, eddy-current and optical sorting stages designed to separate plastics, glass, paper, cardboard and steel and aluminium cans into separate material streams. Visy claims 96% of all material received at Onehunga is recovered while only 4% is sent to landfill – making it one of the most efficient facilities in Australasia. Over 70 000 tonnes of material is expected to be recycled through the MRF in its first year although the modular design allows for a straight-forward upgrade to double the original capacity.
Steven Boland, Visy’s Global Recycling Director, observes: ’The volumes we’ve seen in the first few weeks of operation are certainly in the higher range of our expectations – there may be a number of reasons for this, but the lay-out of the MRF and the design of the technology have easily coped with the tonnages. The exciting fact is that the quality of the material, both input and output, has really exceeded our expectations.’