London WEEE plastics facility set to operate from Feb

A London-based reprocessing facility is set to handle plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) from the back end of February.

Express plastics, located in the London borough of Havering, opened at the start of this year and had originally expected its WEEE sorting line to be operational from September. But managing director David Chesney said there had been a couple of delays and that a new granulator was needed.

“It would have been nice to have it in place already, as we have had enough interest in it,” he said.

“We’ve spoken to all the compliance schemes and existing processors. All of the plastics at the moment are exported but we will be able to pay the going rate. I think there will be far more material than we can handle,” he added.

Currently, there are not thought to be any facilities within the M25 that can handle the plastics fraction from WEEE, so the new facility will be of benefit to London, particularly with the implementation of the WEEE directive next year.

The Express plant, which reprocesses rigid plastics, is currently undergoing a £100,000 upgrade to help it handle more contaminated plastic waste. “We’ve been finding that the plastics are still quite dirty which causes a lot of wear and means the plant can’t run as quickly,” Chesney said.

Its new investment will provide a trommel, air knife and wind sifter, which will be able to get rid of most of the dirt and increase the processing capacity by 50% to help it keep up with demand, which has been huge.

“For the last few months we’ve had to put people on quotas as we can’t take it all,” Chesney said.

Original text is here