Page 51 from: Recycling Technology issue | 2022
51
Techtalks
2022
Swedish textiles recyclers bid farewell to manual sorting
A fully-automated textiles sorting line –
claimed to be the world’s first – is to ramp
up capacity and improve quality output at
Sysav Industri of Malmö in southern Swe-
den.
Stadler designed and built the plant while
Tomra provided the near-infrared sorters. The
new facility is part of a government-funded
project, the Swedish Innovation Platform for
Textile Sorting (SIPTex), which aims to supply
higher-quality textiles to recyclers and the gar-
ment industry.
Sorting at Sysav is currently a manual opera-
tion but the company’s output no longer meets
the requirements of recycling companies and
the fashion industry. As a result, only small vol-
umes of textiles are being recycled. ‘The poten-
tial for increase is enormous,’ stresses SIPTex.
The platform believes automation can help
boost material quality.
The Malmö facility has a capacity of up to 4.5
tonnes per hour on one line. Incoming material
is delivered in bales weighing from 350 to 500kg,
including both pre- and post-consumer waste.
The former consists of dry, industrial waste such
as clippings, yarn and rejects from textile pro-
ducers. The latter is made up of clothing and
household textiles, which include unsorted
material from separate collection sources such
as recycling centres, and manually pre-sorted
industrial waste from textile leasing and rental
services. The material is sorted whole and may
contain buttons, zippers and other non-textile
parts.
‘Our main objective was to test our equip-
ment’s capability to sort the textiles and identify
any changes or optimisations to the process that
may be required,’ explains Stadler’s international
sales manager Urban Kozinc. ‘The biggest chal-
lenge was that automated textile sorting had
never been done before. We have learned that
the feeding system is very important, that the
hoppers and chutes need a special design be-
cause of the size of the textile material, and that
the conveyors require special belts.’
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