Blue help customers increase tonnage and decrease operating costs, with State-Of-The-Art Recycling Plants

Since 1948, Patersons Skip Hire and Recycling have been providing their customers with a quality skip hire service. They have since gone on to expand their range of services to include the supply of recycled aggregates, demolition waste disposal and waste tipping facilities.

With Patersons’ continued growth, the amount of waste that was arriving on site in Dundee was constantly increasing. The system they were previously using to process this waste was becoming inefficient and they were being overtaken by the tonnage they were running through their plant.

Patersons Skip Hire approached Blue Scotland about the possibility of installing a new state-of-the-art, Multi-Million-pound plant to replace their outdated process. BlueMAC were brought in by Blue Scotland to design the plant, which would be processing construction and skip waste. 

James Hurst, BlueMAC Technical Sales Manager, explains the process from start to finish. “The plant features a GK Grizzly finger screen at the infeed point, we split the material at 180mm to create two material streams. The oversize enters the pick station which is kept inline to eliminate potential bridging sites with long pieces. The plasterboard, cardboard, wood, plastic, and waste are removed, and the residual material gets treated with a BlueMAC overband magnet and Air Knife, creating a clean aggregate product.

The undersize (sub 180mm) is conveyed to a Spaleck combi screen, this was the first screen installed in Scotland to include the innovative smartSUSPENSION system; the screen rests on air bags rather than steel springs which means that the system is highly robust, cost-effective and very reliable, even in the harshest of working conditions. It shows no fatigue or settling behaviour as known from the screw pressure springs or rubber buffers used in past systems.

The Screen creates 3 fraction sizes in one pass, the fines are removed from the bottom flip flow section at sub 10mm, these are treated by an inline magnet to remove the ferrous material. The top deck has 75mm 3D screen plates, this material enters a picking station which uses the same bays as the oversize material to remove wood, plastic and waste with the residual getting treated by an overband magnet and air knife to create a clean aggregate.

The 10 -75mm fraction is treated autonomously via the Bluemac Mids Clean-up system. This incorporates non-ferrous removal using a custom Eddy Current, ferrous removal via an inline magnet and finally lights and heavy’s separation using the Westeria Airstar windsifter. With the acceleration belt on the Airstar offering speeds of up to 3m/s, it guarantees the highest throughput with the optimal separation result. “

The output of this new plant is now at 50tph, a great improvement on their previous system which was turning out around 20tph. The output materials include, 20% wood, 29% hardcore, 28% 10mm-50mm fines, 5% ferrous metal, 2% non-ferrous metal, 4% rigid plastic, 2% cardboard and 10% residual waste.

One of the key benefits of Patersons’ newly installed plant is the costs they will save on fines, by having a lower LOI (Loss on Ignition) value. This new plant allows them to classify their materials more accurately to quality for lower levels of landfill tax. The new system includes increased automation, meaning they can process more tonnage with fewer manual pickers, which will be a massive cost saving in the long run.

Managing Director of Patersons, Kerr Paterson, offers his thoughts on the new plant: ‘’I am delighted with what Blue Scotland and BlueMAC have produced. BlueMAC have designed a truly remarkable construction/skip waste recycling plant, bringing together components from some of the best brands in the world. I visited a few other manufacturers to view their latest projects, but as soon as Blue presented their idea to me, I was sold on it. On top of this plant, we have bought and run several machines from Blue in the past and their level of back up and support is non comparable. The local service provided by Blue Machinery Scotland and the expertise in the design process from BlueMAC was winning combination for us.’’

Blue Machinery Scotland Sales Manager, Alistair Rees, adds his thoughts on the deal with Patersons, “I am delighted that Kerr Paterson decided to award Blue Scotland and BlueMAC the contract to design and install this impressive plant. Although it is a significant capital outlay, there is a big return on investment to be had. The money that they will save on manual pickers will help to decrease their operating costs, along with the reduction of material that will be going out as commercial waste. I would like to thank ‘Kerr’ and Patersons Skip Hire for their continued business, and I hope this great working relationship will go from strength to strength.’’ 

If you would like to find out more on Blue’s capabilities on the design and install of state-of-the-art recycling plants like this one, give us a call on 0345 217 8755 or email us on sales@bluegroup.co.uk.