TRADE SHOW REVIEW PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 05/23 www.petpla.net 39 Tomra Recycling Sorting hosts event to celebrate the extension of its test facilities in Germany “The demand to recover recyclables from waste is at a record high” Tomra Recycling Sorting welcomed industry partners, customers and media representatives from February 28 to March 2, 2023 for the opening of a second test facility at its headquarters in Mülheim-Kärlich in Germany. Intended to meet growing demand for material trials, the company now operates one test centre each for waste and metal sorting applications at the same location. The event took place within the framework of the company’s Integrator’s Conference. More than 200 participants from 26 countries joined the two-day event and enjoyed a diverse conference and event program. On the first conference day, participants listened to presentations detailing the company’s strategic direction, including one held by Tomra CEO, Tove Andersen. The second day focused on the extension of the test facilities that marked another milestone in Tomra Recycling Sorting’s long-term goals. “With more stringent legislation and higher recycling targets, the demand to recover recyclables from waste is at a record high and so is the demand for our sorting solutions and material tests. We’ve observed this situation over the last few years and came close to our test capacity limits in Germany. We had to act to ensure the best service for customers and partners”, states Fabrizio Radice, VP and Head of Global Sales and Marketing at Tomra Recycling Sorting. Previously, Tomra’s test centre incorporated both its waste and metal sorting solutions and is one of eight facilities operated at seven locations worldwide that give recyclers and plant operators the opportunity to test their materials on Tomra’s advanced sorting machines before making an investment. “Apart from the increasing demand for tests, we are continuously developing new sorting systems that are all installed in our test centre. In the last few years, we have introduced multiple new products into the market and will roll out more in the future. Thus, we needed to make sure that we have sufficient space for our growing portfolio and decided to invest in an additional building”, adds Radice. Tomra itself will use the extra space for the development of innovations that can be tested and optimised by specialised teams on-site. The company conducts approximately 650 customer and internal trials each year and anticipates the demand to grow in the future. The decision to extend capacities entailed another important change. Ralph Uepping, VP, Head of Technology at Tomra Recycling Sorting explains: “Until recently, we’ve combined both metal and waste sorting machines in one area. Now, each test hall will be dedicated to one segment only. While waste sorting trials are done in the first established facility, the focus of the new facility is on metal sorting.” Tomra’s new X-Tract, Finder, and Combisense, as well as a soon-to-be release machine for advanced aluminium sorting, have been installed in the new facility measuring 1,000m2. The original test center started as a mobile test station in Andernach, Germany, moved to Mülheim-Kärlich in 2009, and steadily grew in sophistication. Today, it offers 1,500m2 for waste sorting trials. The test possibilities range from the recovery of recyclable polymers from mixed and source-separated waste streams, to flake sorting, the separation of wood by material type, and many more. Also, deep learning technologies, as a subset of AI, are part of Tomra’s product portfolio and can be tested in different sorting tasks. Available as a complementary solution to its core technologies, deep learning is a future-forward tool that helps improve sorting performance by detecting previously hard or impossible-to-detect materials. Summarising the advantages of the new test centre setup, Ralph Uepping stresses: “All our products are installed and can be tested in a complete circuit. Together with our expert teams, we can simulate the entire sorting process with eddy currents, magnets, screens and a ballistic separator. This allows us to demonstrate the importance of material pretreatment and define processes that are stable and economically viable even with changing input streams.” www.tomra.com Ribbon cut: (f.l.t.r.) Volker Rehrmann (EVP and Head of Tomra Recycling), Fabrizio Radice (VP and Head of Global Sales and Marketing), Tove Andersen (CEO), Tom Eng (SVP and Head of Tomra Recycling Sorting), André Lehmann (Test Center Manager)
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