Machinex upgrades equipment at Boulder County, Colorado, MRF

Machinex Group, Plessisville, Quebec, has supplied equipment for a major upgrade of the container line at the Boulder County, Colorado, material recovery facility (MRF). The upgraded system has been processing material since the end of August 2017 and has its official ribbon-cutting ceremony Oct. 12, 2017.

The facility, which processes 25 tons of material per hour, receives more than 45,000 tons of recyclables from single-stream collection per year. The county decided to modernize is container line to maximize recovery of plastics and to decrease manual sorting.

To meet the customer’s needs, Machinex provided two MACH Hyspec optical sorters. The first one ejects polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene (PP), while the second one ejects high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and mixed plastics.

A Machinex eddy current separator also was installed upstream of the optical sorters to sort aluminum cans.

Chris Hawn, CEO of Machinex Technologies Inc. (MTI), the U.S. division of the group, says, “There are multiple equipment manufacturers in this plant so this is another example that Machinex is not afraid and is always ready to perform major retrofits or upgrade existing systems that don’t have Machinex equipment in the first place.”

Rick Kattar, recycling operations analyst at Boulder County, says, “We are pleased with the superb performance of Machinex and its subcontractors with regard to the recent MRF processing system upgrades. It is with great pride that we accomplished the retrofit upgrades with little operational disruption and a keen awareness of the importance of working in partnership to achieve our goals.”

He adds, “Machinex worked diligently to maintain a transparent action plan that always engaged the county and its operator, EcoCycle, throughout the duration of the project. The county has been especially pleased with the customer-centric approach Machinex has employed to assure our clear understanding of the challenges, as well as ready solutions if required.”

Machinex has designed and installed more 350 turnkey facilities in partnership with leading MRFs in Canada, the United States, Europe and Oceania.