J&B News & Updates

16.12.20

J&B Recycling has recently invested in a new Eddy Current Separator at the Windermere Material Recycling Facility to increase the efficiency of operations.

This new unit is the fourth Eddy Current Separator in the sorting process for the recovery of non-ferrous metals, for example aluminium, from non-metallic materials and will increase our recovery and recycling rate even more.

Following £7.5m funding from the Business Growth Fund in 2014, this investment is on top of this year’s two plant upgrades of optical sorters and an investment of £1.25m into upgrading and replacing the current fleet. A detailed analysis of current operations at the Windermere MRF have also resulted in further training that reduced downtime and increased the tonnage of material processed.

This recent upgrade in machinery adds to a five-year ongoing programme of investment into infrastructure, process optimisation and automation enabling J&B to be recognised nationally for its exceptionally efficient processing that produces the highest quality materials. This continued investment into the company will cement J&B’s position in the future, particularly as we look towards achieving our fourth year of consecutive growth and moving into 2021.

Ashleigh Sweeney, Operations Manager at J&B Recycling, said: “The upgrade will allow aluminium to be recovered from other streams using a machine as opposed to our sorting operatives carrying out the final quality checks by hand. This will allow our sorting operatives to concentrate on recovering other items to and will mean our recycling and recovery rate will increase.

“In January 2020, we recorded our highest amount of material ever processed in a month, with a 43% increase over January 2019. We hope to constantly improve on this process with these continuous investments.”

The Eddy Current Separator uses a magnetic rotor to “repel” non-ferrous metals, such as aluminium, and enables a separation from non-conductive metals. The magnets form eddy currents in the aluminium which in turn create a magnetic field around the piece of aluminium, the polarity of that magnetic field causes the aluminium to be repelled away from the magnet. This repulsion makes the trajectory of the aluminium greater than that of the non-metallics, allowing the two material streams to be separated.

For all other enquiries on J&B Recycling, please get in touch  here.