News

Industrial shredding specialist UNTHA UK has boldly kick-started its new financial year, with a £250,000 investment in its North Yorkshire test centre.

The team has refurbished its on-site trials facility and procured four new demonstration machines, allowing organisations from across the country to see what the shredders are really capable of, and test them with their own materials. 

20 stock shredders — the RS30, RS40, RS60, RS100, LRK1400, PS1300 and S25 models — are also available for immediate dispatch on a rolling stock basis, as the UK’s environmental progress shows no sign of slowing. In addition to enquiries from waste contractors, recycling specialists and energy firms, UNTHA UK has also experienced rising demand from manufacturers, engineering companies, retailers, and other producers of waste who have previously passed their materials onto a third party to be managed. However, now realising the circular — and economic — value of the ‘waste’, they are seeking to bring their processes in-house.

More than 2,000 product lines of consignment parts are also now available for immediate dispatch, from UNTHA UK’s Boroughbridge HQ.

The £250,000-figure investment comes in response to the market’s desire for greater flexibility, says UNTHA UK’s managing director, Marcus Brew.

“While we read dozens of daily headlines about the economic squeeze, we must remember that environmental pressures are mounting too,” he explained. “As a society, we’re producing more waste than ever before, yet our climate change conscience is also getting stronger. Our industry is therefore working hard to transform ‘waste’ materials into valuable resources that can be reused, recycled, and utilised for energy recovery. We’re pushing new boundaries — with the help of engineering innovations — and that whets people’s appetite as to what more could be done.

“People come to our test centre, wondering — is this really possible? When they see that it is, they don’t want to wait for their shredding technology to be manufactured. They’re hungry to act now. This is challenging when it comes to bespoke machinery. However, some of our models are highly configurable, therefore having a number of those in stock, means we can react faster to customers’ needs.”

UNTHA UK’s investment in spare and wear parts means customers can also keep their assets in perfect working order, with minimal operational disruption.

“Everything revolves around us delivering the highest standard of service to our customers,” Marcus continued. “Because that’s what enhances their throughputs, flexibility and margins.”

A passionate advocate of processing ‘waste’ for reuse, recycling, and energy recovery, UNTHA UK – part of the global UNTHA shredding brand – achieved a 38% revenue uplift in 2022. Turnover exceeded £16m — the firm’s highest-performing year to date — as the team continued to expand, and an equivalent target of £20m has now been set 2023.

Having recently achieved ISO9001, 14001, and 45001 re-certification – for quality, environmental standards, and health and safety respectively – UNTHA UK was also listed as a leading light (top 10) in the Digital Enterprise Top 100 rankings, last year.

Marcus concluded: “It’s taken years of effort to get us to the point where we can rely on the processes, technology, and automation we’ve implemented, to scale at pace, and adapt to market changes with agility.

“That’s why we set bold growth targets for this year, but it’s the people in the team who have delivered on those. We don’t recruit for the sake of it, but now, as we push ahead with our 2023 plans, we know the additional colleagues we’ll welcome into the team will ensure our ongoing success.”

There are more than 13,000 UNTHA shredders installed over six continents worldwide, with over 500in operation in the UK. There are currently 27 people in the UNTHA UK team.

MC Refrigeration Ltd has diverted over 24 tonnes of wood waste from landfill just three months after investing in a PS1300 pallet shredder from UNTHA UK — saving thousands in off-site disposal fees in the process.

The company — which specialises in the installation, removal, repair, and disposal of commercial refrigeration display equipment — contacted UNTHA UK within 20 minutes of seeing a PS1300 in action at another local refrigeration firm. The machine is now installed at the organisation’s factory in Wellingborough and is processing its waste wood pallets on site. The firm is also selling the resulting homogenous 30mm wood chip for biomass heat recovery.

Commenting on the investment, Murray Carvell, managing director at MC Refrigeration Ltd, said: “The fridges we import from Europe don’t arrive on standard-size wooden pallets — they are custom made for the units, which means some can be 12ft long and 3ft wide.

“As a result, they can’t be reused to transport anything else and no-one wants them. Prior to purchasing the shredder, we had no choice but to dispose of them as waste at landfill — something we were keen to find a more circular solution for.”

MC Refrigeration was previously spending over £1,000 per month in landfill costs, skip hire, and collection fees.

“Not only have we reduced our waste footprint, but the financials stack up too,” added Murray. “With the savings we’re making, the machine will pay for itself in 3-4 years. It is also economical to run and keeps our site tidy.”

Ian Harvey, sales manager at UNTHA UK, concluded: “The PS1300 is one of our most compact single-shaft machines — purposely engineered for waste wood, it can process up to 30 pallets per hour.

It’s been fantastic working with Murray on this project. And there is huge potential for other refrigeration organisations within the industry to copy this closed loop, best-practice model for their own sites.

Our sales director Gary Moore, recently featured in Circular, exploring how the plastic recycling conversation is evolving in industry and what this means for ‘trickier’ applications. If you missed the original article, you can catch up below…

Plastics have long been at the centre of the waste and recycling debate, with the focus in recent years having been on the phasing out of single-use plastics. And as we look towards the next 12 months, we’ll likely see attention being directed towards the ‘trickier’ side of plastic recycling — specifically in relation to flexible, or soft, plastics

A closer look at the UK’s flexible plastics
For many years soft plastics have been used widely in packaging, medical devices, construction materials, and many other industries due to their versatility and durability. But in recent times, there has been a greater focus on what happens to them at the end of their lifespan.

In a bid to help stop such items being landfilled or incinerated, supermarkets across the country have set up collection points for recycling, but the UK’s infrastructure has struggled to process them.

For instance, despite representing 22% of all UK consumer plastic packaging in 2020, only 8% were recycled. This is one of the many reasons they are often deemed to be ‘problematic’ to deal with when “using traditional mechanical methods.”

As a result of local authorities being expected to adopt collection processes and infrastructure to recycle this waste stream by 2027, a competition — The Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) — has recently been launched by UK Research and Innovation’s SSPP Challenge and the Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network. The aim is to find innovative design solutions which capture — and make savvy use of — this household packaging waste.

However, while this is great news, it is important to consider how recycling lines will adapt to be able to process these notoriously difficult items. There will need to be a change in approach to the collection and handling of plastics, to ensure this is successful.

 

Handling plastics on home soil and the role of shredding
Last year, an investigation into what happened to supermarkets’ soft plastics, uncovered that certain stores’ material was shipped overseas — some for recycling and others which faced a more “uncertain fate”.

Today, there are lots of conversations happening in industry about the importance of plastics being handled in the country of origin, and it is vital that this remains a priority.

Consequently, this also means that there will be greater scrutiny on general recyclers handling plastics and plastic recycling specialists not always defaulting to energy recovery routes, but, where possible, shredding to segregate the plastics so that they can be reprocessed.

It is no secret that soft plastics — such as bags and films — are difficult to recycle using traditional methods, because they are easily tangled and can cause problems with processing equipment. But this is where shredding can help.

Once the soft plastic material has been shredded, it can then be further processed through other recycling techniques, to create new products. Shredding is a crucial step, as it helps to ensure that the material is more manageable, before it can be effectively recycled and reused.

 

What’s in store for this ‘tricky’ application?
In recent years, the negative impact of plastic waste on the environment has led to increased public awareness and concern about the use of plastics — especially those of the single-use variety. As a result, there has been a growing demand for sustainable alternatives and environmentally friendly practices.

It’s likely that we will continue to see this mindset translate into the soft plastics arena, too — not least because the UK Government has set targets to increase recycling rates, with a goal of 70% of plastic packaging by 2030.

Overall, while there is still progress to be made, the future of the country’s soft plastic recycling will look very promising, if it is not left and regarded as someone else’s ‘problem’.

With the right mindset and commitment to investments, there are technologies that can process more complicated plastic products, harness them as a resource, and help the nation reach its bold recycling targets.

In a throughput hungry industry, biomass producers have long been keen to create as much fuel as possible to maximise their return on investment from capital equipment. But as shredding technologies continue to advance at pace, operators are finding their ROI now comes from different design features — and they’re benefitting the planet in the process. Gary Moore, sales director of UNTHA UK, explores…

Of course it makes sense that the more of a material you can process — and therefore the harder you can make an investment work — the more profitable your operation should become. It’s basic economics. 

Things are no different in the biomass market. Wood processors have long strived to achieve the highest possible throughputs from their shredding technologies, so they can handle a greater volume of input material, create as much on-spec product as they can for resale, and accelerate the payback period from their asset investment. Again, it’s a case of simple maths, and of course the more waste wood that can be transformed in the process, the more renewable fuel we have to utilise as a society, and the tidier sites will become as stockpiles don’t begin to mount.

The challenges of high speed wood shredding

The challenge arises however, in the way such wood shredding machines have traditionally been designed. To achieve high throughputs, many shredders have — perhaps unsurprisingly — been engineered to run at high speeds. Yet while this may satisfy capacity targets — certainly in the early days of a shredder’s life — biomass producers have also found themselves creating a disproportionately high volume of over-sized (non-spec) product which must be re-shredded, and large amounts of non-saleable fines which are subject to costly disposal fees. The machines are also subjected to higher wear rates, meaning disruptive breakdowns become more frequent and operational costs rise due to the excessive purchase of parts and unplanned maintenance. Then there’s the fire risk. The drive train becomes hotter when a shredder runs at higher speeds, therefore the danger of the wood — a highly combustible material — catching alight, rockets. So too do insurance premiums.

This is not to say that these factors prohibit the investment in such machines. Many high speed biomass shredders have been sold globally, with an influx of American machines, for instance, continuing to come onto the UK market, even in recent years. It’s simply a case that biomass producers have accepted all of these operational implications as par for the course in wood waste shredding. But why should this be the norm, when engineering advancements could change the face of what’s possible, when creating biomass or any other alternative fuel?

Slow speed shredding — a feasible alternative?

The emergence of slow speed biomass shredders was met with some scepticism to begin with, because they operate — and sound — extremely different to their higher speed counterparts. But that doesn’t mean they’re not up to the job. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Utilising a higher torque drive, modern biomass shredders can now operate at slower speeds without any detrimental impact on throughputs. The slower speed of the UNTHA XR3000C, for example, combined with special biomass cutter, cutting configuration and gear reducer, means customers can achieve the same impressive throughput figures, yet a higher grade output. Usually in a single step. There are also less fines, less overs, less dust and therefore a significantly reduced fire risk. Lower wear reduces the whole life cost of the machine, the likelihood of unplanned breakdowns plummets, and the net capacity of the biomass line rises, as uptime is higher. 

Greener biomass production

Importantly, and this point will only grow in relevance over the coming years, the XR is also an electrically driven machine. Its Eco Power Drive hit the headlines when the technology was first launched, not least due to its ability to lower fuel consumption and the associated costs by typically 50% — compared to diesel hydraulic machines — therefore further accelerating the ROI on the shredder. Some biomass customers closed the loop completely and powered their XRs using green energy created on their own sites.

The current cost of electricity has lessened the money saving benefits of the Eco Power Drive, but still operators benefit from a cleaner, greener way to produce their biomass. And given we’re producing an alternative fuel to protect the planet in the first place, surely it makes sense that the machines themselves pack a greater sustainability punch.

The search for flexibility 

With quick interchangeable screens, the XR has introduced a new degree of flexibility for biomass manufacturers too, ensuring this machine can handle the full range of waste wood grades to create various on-specification biomass materials.  Such operational versatility — and the opportunity to satisfy the fuel requirements of different offtakers — has never been so important, particularly given the pressures of the economic climate.

Another iteration of the machine has also been engineered — the XR3000RC for green waste. This is likewise a single shaft shredder, with two knife rows. However, unlike the aforementioned technology which requires a ram assist for dealing with bulky wood waste, this isn‘t needed when processing green materials such as trees, shrubs and brush wood. The result is once again a high quality biomass product, or a landscaping mulch material for operators who prefer to pursue that offtaking route.

A market rich with change?

Despite the fiscal climate that we hear about so frequently on the news, the market is ripe with change at the moment. Rising logistics and distribution activity means levels of packaging waste arisings are high — particularly when it comes to wooden crates — and the construction, regeneration and demolition industries remain extremely busy. Such activity is generating more A, B and C wood that can be converted into biomass. 

Demand for biomass shredders is therefore strong, and many machines that have previously been deemed an affordable investment due to their initial purchase price, are now being actively swapped out for technologies that can stand the test of time. The initial capital investment may be higher, but so too is the ROI potential — not to mention the potential environmental gain.

Long-standing UNTHA customer H. Brown & Son Recycling has invested in a new UNTHA shredder, switching from an XR to a ZR.

The Stoke-on-Trent based waste management firm has used UNTHA shredding technology within its alternative fuel production plant for over a decade.

But following the launch of the new ZR pre-shredder, last Autumn, Browns will switch out its trusty XR, after 11 years of operational service.

The new machine will process the same variety of input materials – a multifaceted mix of commercial, industrial and other bulky wastes – transforming them into a 200mm fuel for UK Waste to Energy conversion.

But following extensive on-site trials, Browns has discovered it can increase its throughputs by up to 30%, thanks to UNTHA’s ongoing innovation.

“We’ve always been impressed with what we can achieve with our shredders,” commented Browns’ managing director Rod Brown. “And the firm’s constant commitment to pushing new boundaries has continued to support the evolution of our business.

“We were early adopters of UNTHA’s Waste to Energy equipment, for example, back in the early 2010s, running the XR as a primary shredder and the former TR as a secondary shredder, to produce a highly refined SRF fraction. As the RDF side of our business has grown, we’ve continued to rely heavily on the XR – in fact, it’s probably completed over 18,000 hours of service for us! But when the ZR came out we thought we’d see what we could achieve with this new technology.”

The two-shaft UNTHA ZR2400 has been fitted with the H waste table, to best suit Browns’ RDF set-up.

“This is a low speed, high torque machine, with bi-directional shaft rotation, which means the cutters grab, shear and liberate in forward and reverse. The result is a continuous operation – Browns will always be shredding!” added UNTHA UK’s managing director Marcus Brew.

“We’re really impressed that the ZR comes with the same electric drive – and therefore the same power savings – that we’re used to,” concluded Rod. “You don’t traditionally expect this performance from a two-shaft machine.”

Hot on the heels of growing customer demand for the UNTHA PS1300, we’ve penned and produced a whole range of content to showcase our compact yet powerful pallet shredder in all its glory.

https://youtu.be/eMQlRKGCqws

While defined requirements – such as a need to reduce the volume of ‘waste’ or liberate locked materials – are a key driver of shredder investments, it goes without saying that businesses must continually ensure that operations are commercially viable too.

That’s why doing the right sums and keeping a sharp eye on finances – not least as economic conditions become increasingly strained across the globe – is all the more important for organisations large and small.

But here at UNTHA, we know time is precious, which is why we’ve done the hard work for you. And it comes as no surprise that the numbers for our innovative little pallet shredder really stack up.

Purposefully engineered for busy or space-constrained sites, the UNTHA PS1300 is capable of comfortably handling 30 pallets per hour to achieve a 30MM biomass product – with particle precision guaranteed – and generating over £30 profit per hour.

That’s over £50,000 profit within reach each year, before you even consider the savings on your original waste collection and disposal fees!

Don’t just let us do the talking – take a look at the 9-page guide for yourself, to learn more about the benefits of wooden pallet shredding, how to make the most of your output material, and exactly how you can calculate the profit potential of your own organisation.

UNTHA UK recently appeared in a construction and demolition feature, in the Waste Management World publication. If you missed it, you can read the article in full here…

Category
Industrial shredders.

Challenge
Construction and demolition (c&d) waste comprises some of the toughest materials that many operators not only consider difficult to process and reduce in volume but, in many cases, economically ‘unshreddable’.

From problematics skip waste to demotion material – such as wood, non-ferrous extrusions, composite panels work and structures, and more – this is typically unsorted, which can add an additional dimension of complexity for operators.

Solution
Following 24 months of rigorous industry research and development, UNTHA’s new two shaft shredder the ZR made its official UK debut in September 2021.

The high-performance ZR series comprises two machines – the ZR2400H and ZR2400W – which have been specifically engineered for multi-shift, continuous pre-shredding, even when handling difficult materials.

Additionally, the machine’s low speed, high torque drive means it can process severe duty applications with ease, for a high level of plant availability. And the modular, quick-change cutting table design presents versatility at the core.

Both pre-shredders are also supplied with the UNTHA Eco Power Drive with water-cooled synchronous motors – an energy-efficient concept which has become globally renowned for its ability to reduce energy consumption by up to 75%.

Company
UNTHA UK is the UK division of the Austrian-headquartered globally renowned industrial shredding specialist, UNTHA.

Country
UK – but operates globally.

More info (website)
https://www.untha.co.uk/industrial-shredders/zr-shredders/

Further information about the machines (if needed)
The ZR2400H has been engineered for the high throughput, rough shredding of bulky waste, C&I waste, waste wood, MSW, mattresses, carpets, railway sleepers, bales and rolled goods. Available as a static or mobile machine with crawler tracks, the goal for this model is volume reduction (90% <300mm), material breakdown for further treatment, and alternative fuel production. This cutting system is therefore perfect for cement plants, operators in the biomass and energy recovery industries, MRFs, sorting and waste disposal firms.

The ZR2400W is the perfect metal scrap shredder and excels also in the processing of WEEE and large domestic appliances. Again, the goal is to achieve a rough material breakdown (90% <300mm) for downstream sorting, making this the ideal machine for metal processors, recyclers, and aluminium and metal manufacturers.