The latest project the German manufacturer Stadler has completed for Schroll is the new recycling centre at La Maix, in the Vosges, near the town of Épinal (France). This centre has been dimensioned to be able to process 80,000 tonnes of waste per year.

On the customer’s request, the facility was designed to allow for future expansion and the sorting of further fractions, as well as the possibility of installing robots. Stadler addressed this demand by including two independent sorting lines - one for the treatment of multi-material and one for hollow material: this set-up gives more flexibility by allowing, for example, to work on one line in two shifts and in one shift on the other line.

The multi-material plant takes in the whole 15-tonne/hour input, which is fed into a Stadler PPK ballistic separator and two Stadler STT2000-8-1 ballistic separators for mechanical sorting. This is followed by optical separation with four near-infrared (NIR) devices, and the process is completed with manual sorting. The final output fractions of this line are PCNC (packaging and small cardboard fractions), cardboard, film and JRM (newspapers, journals, magazines), as well as hollow materials which are then fed into the plant’s second sorting line.

The hollow materials line, with a throughput of four tonnes per hour, sorts the fractions mechanically and optically, with a final manual sorting. It uses a Stadler STT2000-8-1 ballistic separators, a magnet, a separator for non-ferrous metals and five NIR devices, to produce an output of clear and coloured PET, HDPE, laminates, aluminium, film, mixed paper and residual fractions.