Axion Polymers has made further investments in its Manchester plastics recycling facility to improve waste processing capacity.
In addition, the company has increased the extrusion potential for its 100% recycled polymer grades.
Looking at the recycling facility, additional equipment has been installed at the Shredder Waste Advanced Processing plant (SWAPP) in Trafford Park. This has ‘de=bottlenecked’ throughput of waste material. As a result, capacity has improved by 30%.
Materials currently being reprocessed are sourced from vehicle shredders and end-of-life vehicles, together with waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE). These are processed into Axpoly PP and ABS grades.
The increased processing capacity has resulted in a 20% increase in recycled polymer production, supporting additional reprocessing volumes.
Operated jointly with S Norton, one of the UK’s leading ferrous and non-ferrous metal recyclers, the SWAPP facility has an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes. The process sees separation of non-metallic fractions (ASR or shredder ‘fluff’) from the equivalent of about 80,000 cars per year.
Judith Clayman, GM at Axion, said: “[The team] all pulled together to design and install the plant modifications as efficiently as possible and I am very pleased with the result.”
The plant supports a 95% recycling recovery rate for cars to create a circular economy model for automotive materials.
Recycled Axpoly polymer can be used as a direct replacement for virgin material, or combined with virgin as necessary.