Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The £2m MRF plant in Hockwold – thought to be the first in the UK to be 100 per cent bio fuel powered – is already running close to full capacity just three months after launch, taking material from local authorities including Basildon District Council and Brentwood Borough Council.

The facility can operate around the clock without the use of fossil fuels. Its generator – supplied and operated by Norfol-based Living Fuels – uses recycled cooking oils from local authorities, caterers and restaurant chains to produce its power and any surplus electricity is fed back to the national grid.

The plant is 100 per cent owned by Newport Paper and is intended to help meet the increasing demand for recycling facilities from local authorities. It was built by Northampton’s Nicholls Jovisa Ltd, the largest commissioned by them in the UK.

Designed to take in around 75,000 tonnes of mixed recyclables each year, and with a projected recovery rate of over 97 per cent, this new generation MRF can take almost any mix of recyclables and produce the correct quality recyclate demanded by the stringent requirements of the reprocessing industry.

The new MRF facility is designed to be as efficient as possible and uses less manpower per tonne than older style MRFs.

Together with a state of the art baler the equipment includes a bag splitter, two sorting platforms, trommel and overband magnet designed to separate co-mingled materials such as newspapers, magazines, cardboard, Yellow Pages, junk mail, grey board, all plastics, aluminium and steel cans.

Matthew Hoare, managing director of Newport Paper, said: “I am delighted that our first MRF is now operational which gives us better control over the quality of recyclate given to reprocessors. It is also a great first step towards our ambitious plans to operate five MRFs by the end of 2010.”