For Päijät-Häme Waste Management, the new LATE sorting station in Kujala, Lahti, represents a major step towards the ambitious goal of a 50% recycling rate. With its capacity of 65,000 tonnes, this 10 million euro facility is able to recover plastic, cardboard, and aluminium and other metals from household rubbish, construction waste, and waste suitable for energy generation.
After a bidding process, Päijät-Häme Waste Management selected Vimelco to be the building project’s main co-ordinator. In this capacity, Vimelco picked Ferroplan as its conveyor solution supplier. Purchase price was just one of the many factors influencing the choice of supplier, with just as much consideration given to maintenance and spare-parts costs, energy consumption, staffing and machinery requirements, and the value of the material recovered. Choosing Ferroplan as a subcontractor was made easier by the companies’ previous collaboration, which involved work on a similar project for waste company Kymenlaakson Jäte Oy. That work yielded excellent results.
Well-functioning solutions and reliable conveyors
The end customer wanted its modern new facility to have a clean operating environment, which created certain requirements for the conveyor system. Also, the conveyors had to be easy to use and reliable, particularly because of the length of the plant’s conveyor system: in all, the new plant uses more than half a kilometre of conveyors.
‘Conveyors are not always designed to cope with challenging waste materials, but one of Ferroplan’s good traits is an ability to make improvements as soon as any weaknesses emerge. Their factory being located in Päijät-Häme was another bonus,’ says Vimelco product manager Lauri Rahikoinen, listing Ferroplan’s strengths as a supplier.
Minimising the amount of waste sent to landfills
As the new plant can be used to sort waste of all types, from household and construction waste to waste used for energy generation, only a couple per cent of the solid waste now ends up as landfill. Since the multi-step, adjustable process brings flexibility also, operations can be developed in line with the market situation.
The suppliers can be proud of the pioneering spirit of the project too: this facility, along with Ekokem’s Eco Refinery, is Finland’s first sorting plant capable of recovering not only metals but also plastics and fibres from a wide range of waste materials. That’s recycling at its best.
The LATE sorting plant...
- can handle 65,000 tonnes in two shifts
- can crush around 20 tonnes of waste in an hour (the amount depends on the waste type)
- receives 250 tonnes of waste a day
- has 14 exit points for recovered material
- was delivered by Vimelco Oy
- uses conveyors supplied by Ferroplan Oy
Olemme yhteydessä mahdollisimman pian.
