Plastics – returning in a completely new guise

Vecoplan receives multi-million-Euro order from Brightmark Energy

Headquartered in San Francisco, Brightmark Energy designs and builds plants for the recycling industry – and one of the company’s current projects is in Ashley, Indiana. The new ‘plastic-to-fuel’ plant will convert various types of plastic waste into fuels. The Vecoplan Group received an order from Brightmark worth several million Euros to supply the necessary technology for processing the input material, including powerful pre-shredders and post-shredders.

Scheduled to go into operation in the summer of 2020, the new plant will produce annually around 68 million litres of diesel and petroleum fuel, plus just under 23 million litres of wax – all won from around 100 000 tons of mixed plastic waste. The input consists of inferior materials, such as residual waste from recovery plants and production waste. Brightmark has commissioned Vecoplan AG to supply the appropriate shredding technology for the efficient processing of this enormous quantity of plastics. The Vecoplan Group, which is based at Bad Marienberg in the Westerwald region of Germany, will supply its VAZ 2000 single-shaft pre-shredder as well as a VEZ 2500 high-performance shredder, which is regarded as a benchmark in the industry thanks to its consistently high throughput and the homogeneous quality of its output. Other system components will also be necessary for the operation of the plant, including machines to remove non-shreddable foreign matter from the mass and to dry or pelletise the material. ‘In the run-up to the project, we carefully analysed the mixed waste to meet the plant’s stringent requirements,’ says Bob Gilmore, managing director of Vecoplan’s American branch in Archdale, North Carolina, which will carry out the project in Ashley. Jay Schabel, head of the plastics division at Brightmark Energy, is pleased that Vecoplan got the contract. ‘We checked out the relevant suppliers on the market really intensively and it was Vecoplan who convinced us,’ he reports. ‘We’re confident that we’ve selected the best supplier for this task.’ He is also very enthusiastic about Vecoplan’s comprehensive service. ‘Now we’re looking forward to the successful installation of the systems,’ he says. The ground-breaking ceremony will take place at the end of May.

‘Now we’re looking forward to the successful installation of the systems,’ he says. The ground-breaking ceremony will take place at the end of May.

Vecoplan AG is a leading manufacturer of machines and systems for the resources and recycling industry. These are used for shredding, conveying and reprocessing wood, biomass, plastics, paper and other recyclable materials such as domestic and industrial waste. Vecoplan develops and manufactures the systems and components, and sells them worldwide into the wood reprocessing and waste processing industries. It currently has around 380 employees at its locations in Germany, the USA, the UK, Spain and Poland.