Machinex Partners with RTD to Build Townsville MRF in Australia

In collaboration with RTD, its partner and distributor in Oceania, Machinex has supplied its first complete system in Australia that has been in operation since early summer. The contents of household recycling bins are now being processed at a new material recovery facility (MRF) in Townsville, located in the North Queensland region.

The new Townsville MRF was built and is being operated by Re.Group, an Australian company that specializes in recycling and the recovery of resources from waste. In July 2016, Townsville City Council awarded Re.Group a contract to process around 15,000 tons per annum of its kerbside recycling for at least the next eight years.

“We are very proud of this new facility that will provide world-class recycling services for the people of North Queensland,” Re.Group Managing Director David Singh said in a statement.

RDT, which is the engineering arm of Re.Group, is based in Queensland but works with leading equipment suppliers from around the world and selects the best technology for each recycling project.

“We have been supplying sorting equipment to RDT since 2010,” Machinex CEO Pierre Paré said in a statement. “Over the years, our partnership has solidified and we are very proud to see the very first, complete Machinex system in Australia in operation today.”

The single stream system, which process 15 tons of recyclables per hour, incorporates some of the most recent sorting technologies such as different types of discs screens to sort cardboard, newspaper, and mixed paper; a ballistic separator to finish the separation of the containers and the mixed paper; magnetic separators to remove ferrous and non-ferrous metals; and an optical sorter to separate plastics grades.

There is also a glass processing circuit that uses Krysteline implosion technology to turn bottles into sand. This “glass sand” can replace virgin sand in bulk markets such as road construction and concreting works. Re.Group has installed a drying unit at Townsville that destroys residual sugars and odors on glass and allows the glass sand product to also be used in the higher value markets such as sandblasting and pool filtration.