6
Handling
1 000 cars
an hour
? ?
A U T H O R Martijn Reintjes
EMR processes around 16 end-of-life
vehicles a minute at its facilities
around the world. That’s nearly 1 000
cars every hour. Over the past ten
years, the company has invested more
than EUR 350 million in technology
and partnerships to enable its sites to
recycle and recover 95% of a vehicle.
It all starts with depollution. At this
stage any hazardous materials from
ELVs are removed. In the UK, EMR car-
ries this out at a wide network of autho-
rised treatment facilities. Afterwards,
the car is baled and taken to one of its
shredders. At Liverpool, EMR operates
what is claimed to be the world’s largest
mega shredder. With a 10 000 horse-
power drive, it can shred a car into
small pieces in just 15 seconds.
What follows is the separation process
in order to identify and isolate the
many different materials in any vehi-
cle. Magnets, flotation systems,
sieves, artificial intelligence systems
and many other smart technologies
help to separate the various compo-
nents of a vehicle, including plastic
from the dashboard, foam from the
seats and glass from the windscreen.
The recycled metals are sold to EMR’s
customers around the globe while the
plastics are shipped to the company’s
plastics recycling division, MBA
Polymers.
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