Following a £14 mn investment programme, AWS Eco Plastics has opened its UK reprocessing centre – said to be Europe’s largest, with a capable of handling 2 bn plastics bottles and containers/year.
The major upgrade to the plant at Hemswell, has quadrupled its capacity to 15 t of plastics waste/hour (100,000 t annually) and is a key step towards AWS’s goal of becoming the leading UK provider of food grade recycled plastics.
The facility is able to segregate and process a wider range of plastics which previously had been baled and sent abroad for reprocessing or to landfill sites. Most bottles are now delabelled, granulated and washed at the plant. The resulting flakes are then sent on for use in new plastics products such as packaging, fleece jackets and piping.
AWS chief executive Jonathan Short says: "Britain has lagged behind Europe in the recycling of plastics. There is currently very little recycling of mixed plastics as the capacity to reprocess has been limited. Our new plant with its considerable extra capacity can take plastics waste from local councils, supermarkets and other users and recycle it into flakes of the highest quality for use in general manufacturing and plastic bags."
Next year, AWS will install a new processing line which will enable it to sort and process recycled plastics to the standard required by the food industry.
