Castleford, UK-based plastic recycling company Bright Green Plastics has invested £750,000 in a new, advanced plastic sorting plant at its site in West Yorkshire. Included in this amount is the purchase of the plant, civil engineering and installation costs.
Bright Green Plastics, formerly known as Imerplast, only recently reopened for business - six months after the scheduled opening in January of this year. The company says it recycles over 40,000 tonnes of household and commercial material each year.
The new sorting facility uses infrared sorting technology to sort bales of mixed plastics and 3D materials collected from the kerbside, and sort them by polymer type, colour and sift out any waste.
The new facility will enable Bright Green Plastics to buy material from the wider market and eliminate its reliance on purchasing pre-sorted bales from other processors, bringing commercial benefits to the business and increasing its supply of high quality, sorted materials.
“We’re set to play a key role in increasing the UK’s recycling capacity,” said Craig Davison, manager of the plant.
The new sorting plant is phase one of a long-term investment plan which aims to upgrade equipment to keep up with the demand of recycling services in line with the introduction of UK plastic tax in 2022. It will reduce the core costs within the business, said Steve Spencer, managing director at Bright Green Plastics.
“However, we are also excited by the fact it will create more jobs in an area, whilst boosting the UK plastic reprocessing industry – which has been badly affected by COVID19, by creating more recycling capacity.”
“The new UK sorting plant is likely to discourage exporting of mixed materials due to this new UK based processing capacity to sort the plastics into single stream polymers prior to recycling,” said Spencer.
“Getting to work with the very latest technology to keep perfectly good, recyclable plastic in the UK is a huge step in the right direction for our industry after what’s been an extremely challenging time,” added Craig Davison.