At their site at Ötztal Bahnhof in Austria’s Tyrol, some 1000 tonnes of material are processed every month. This consists of 900 tonnes of cardboard and paper, 70 tonnes of film and 30 tonnes of hard plastics. Cardboard and paper waste collected from businesses and local communities is pre-compacted. The plastic materials take the form of pre-sorted industrial waste of manufacturers, including hard plastics, films, recyclable waste and HDPE. The cardboard and paper bales – in other words, the larger proportion of the bales – are loaded directly onto trains from the adjoining loading platform and thus provided with environmentally-friendly transport. The bales of film and the stable bales of hard plastics suitable for transport are carried by truck to the recycling plant.
The baling press then in use was unable to cope with the growing volume of material and the associated required bale weights. It was no longer possible to process materials such as the hard plastics effectively. What was required was a system that would efficiently produce bales of greater weight, provide a higher throughput rate (with integration of the existing conveyor system) and ensure adaptability to the range of materials. Not to forget the fact that the energy efficiency of this system was to be outstanding!
After a detailed review of the situation and the requirements, the fully automatic Austropressen APK-ES 135 channel baling press providing 5-fold vertical binding of the bales was selected as the optimal solution. The existing conveyor belt was retrofitted with a state-of-the-art personnel protection system and connected to the new channel baling press.
