24 September 2015
SWAPP team pushes on
from ASR recycling milestone
Axion director Keith Freegard frequently uses the adjective ‘clever’
when discussing the multi-million-pound Shredder Waste Advanced
Processing Plant built not so far from the Old Trafford home of
English footballing giant Manchester United. A joint project between
privately-owned metal recycling firm S. Norton & Co. and process
engineering specialist Axion, it has set lofty recycling benchmarks for
automotive shredder residue, as Recycling International discovered.
During a tour of the Shredder Waste Advanced Processing Plant (SWAPP) at
Trafford Park in the north-west England city of
Manchester, Keith Freegard of Axion Recycling
points to buildings housing a suite of innovative
physical separation technologies for automotive
shredder residue (ASR) and says: ‘A lot of blood,
sweat and tears have gone into that.’
He could equally have said ‘years’ as well as
‘tears’ given that his team started refining its
materials processing systems in 2006 with the
SWAPP plant, beating the 95% recycling and
recovery target in 2013 – well in advance of the
January 2015 revised target set by the EU’s End-
of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive.
Built in 2010 and 2011, and expanded last year
to incorporate even more ‘clever’ separation
steps, the SWAPP is a joint venture between
Axion and long-established scrap processor
S. Norton & Co. that occupies around a quarter
of the latter’s site in western Manchester. Boast-
ing an annual capacity of 200 000 tonnes and
separating various fractions from the equivalent
of around 800 000 cars a year, the SWAPP has
achieved a materials recycling rate of ‘well past
85%’ when taking into account metals (around
75%), plastics and a stone/glass aggregate cur-
rently used in trench-filling and road-laying
applications. Add in the facility’s fuel products
destined for energy recovery and the 95%
threshold is being surpassed on a constant basis.
‘We can operate the plant at zero-to-landfill a
lot of the time, although it’s not always possi-
ble,’ Freegard underlines. ‘But we are definitely
beating 95% all of the time.’
Rich area of opportunity
To understand better how the SWAPP team has
arrived at this momentous point, a little back-
ground is illuminating.
Freegard is a qualified chemical engineer who
has not lost his passion for the science of mate-
rials processing and for discovery of new recy-
cling techniques. An operations manager for the
C O V E R S T O R Y By Ian Martin
Formed as a partnership
in Liverpool as a buyer
of small volumes of
metals and rags.
Expanded into larger
premises and bought
its first crane and
stacker truck.
Further expansion into
a much larger yard.
1960 ’73 ’751970
More than half a century of highlights at S. Norton
Axion’s Keith Freegard:
‘We can operate
the plant at
zero-to-landfill
a lot of the time,
although it’s not
always possible.’
RI-7 p00_Company Profile 24 04-09-15 09:03
