In sorting plants, different types of post-consumer packaging waste and commercial waste are separated.

Sorting and screening
On arrival, the waste is crudely separated and freed from large anomalies. The sorting process starts in a rotating drum where smaller contaminants are separated from the material. The rotating drum with its different sized holes allows the material to fall onto different conveyor belts. Larger items are sorted manually and put into their relevant containers.

Separation, sifting & sorting
The small-sized fraction first passes under a magnetic separator to remove ferrous metal, then a separator for non-ferrous metals removes items such as aluminium and tin.

The medium-sized fraction is divided into light and heavy fractions by an air separator. The ballistic separator then sorts the secondary raw materials according to their size and weight, before another separator removes the metals and divides them into ferrous and non-ferrous fractions to further improve the quality of the secondary raw material streams.

Near-infrared technology
Secondary raw material streams pass near-infrared devices before they reach the manual separation station. These devices use compressed air to eject materials such as paper, foil or different types of plastics (PE, PP and PET), which are then moved into different storage containers via conveyor belts.

Pressing & Loading
After manually checking the quality of the secondary raw materials they are pressed into bales, loaded onto vehicles and then supplied to manufacturing industry.