Sims’ plastics technology step-up in UK

United Kingdom – The UK division of electronics recycler Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS) has developed a proprietary technology which ‘will enable the company to further refine plastics for a greater number of end uses’.

Under development for the past five years, it has been trialled at the company’s electronics recycling facility at Newport in South Wales and will be implemented on a large scale at Sims’ new plastics recycling centre at Billingham in north-east England with an estimated processing capacity of 70 000 tonnes per year.

The decision to locate the new technology to a bespoke advanced plastics recycling centre came after the company reached a tipping point in the volumes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) it processes, which made the new plastics centre economically viable. The Billingham facility will meet demand from the significantly increased volumes of material entering Sims’ recycling sites each year and has been designed to cope with even larger quantities in future.

Biagio Adragna, Country Manager for SRS in the UK, explains: ‘The volume of plastics entering our process has reached a point that has allowed us to invest in chasing and refining different polymers in suitable volumes for sustainable markets. The new process can create a number of different polymers which are usable for compounding. The other advantage is that we can now chase complex polymer streams from other sources. Our process is able to cope with a very complex set of plastics. Valuable plastics can be recovered from electronics or other material streams, either post-consumer, post-industrial or post-car shredder residues. We are now working with clients to process from these sources and have created extra capacity to allow us to provide an exciting recycled plastics solution to Europe’s manufacturing industry.’