STADLER and TOMRA deliver the world’s first fully automated textile sorting plant in Malmö, Sweden

Testing the technology on textiles

The plant in Malmö is the third phase in the SIPTex project, and follows an initial theoretical study and, in phase two, the construction of a small pilot plant in Avesta, also designed and supplied by STADLER and TOMRA in 2017. In this second phase, the project collected 700 tonnes of used textiles from recycling centers. Following a manual pre-sorting of reusable textiles, the waste material was fed into the Avesta pilot plant.

“Our main objective was to test our equipment’s capability to sort the textiles and identify any changes or optimizations to the process that may be required,” says STADLER International Sales Manager Urban Kozinc. “The main challenge was that automated textile sorting had never been done before. Working on this pilot plant we have understood that the feeding system is very important, that the hoppers and chutes need a special design because of the size of the textile material, and that the conveyors needed special belts. We also had to find the way to achieve a constant material flow, without peaks. And we learned that labelling on the textiles is not always 100% correct. In this phase of the project we gained the knowledge we needed for the third phase, the Malmö industrial-scale plant.”

The world’s first fully-automated textile sorting plant

The automated textile sorting plant in Malmö has a capacity of up to 4.5 tonnes/hour in one line. The incoming material is delivered in bales, typically weighting 350 to 500 kg. It includes pre- and post-consumer waste. The former consists of dry, industrial waste from textile producers such as clippings, yarn and rejects. The latter is made up of clothing and household textiles, which include unsorted material from separate collection from sources such as recycling centers, and manually pre-sorted and industrial waste from textile leasing and rental services. The material is sorted whole and may contain buttons, zippers and other non-textile parts. 

The plant was entirely designed by STADLER in close cooperation with TOMRA. The project has included the supply of the dosing system, conveyor belts, NIR Optical Sorting Units, high-speed conveyor belts, bunker belts, baler, steelwork, electrical and control system, compressed air system and de-dusting system.

Olof Linde, construction project manager of Sysav Industri AB, is impressed with the whole development and construction process: “We appreciate the good cooperation with STADLER and TOMRA, and are very proud that together we have been able to erect and start-up the plant under present conditions with the coronavirus pandemic. The employees from both STADLER and TOMRA have been extremely competent and dedicated to their task during this project. Even during this special pandemic time, we never felt any doubt that all our requirements would be met in the end.” 

He feels that Sysav Industri AB has found the right partners for this project: “We feel that the plant is of high quality and it’s re-assuring for us that even though automated textile sorting is a new technology, the base concept has been developed and refined by STADLER and TOMRA in numerous existing plants. Building a world-unique facility requires stable and experienced partners.”     

The SIPTex project is funded by Vinnova, the Swedish government agency that administers state funding for research and development, and led by IVL, the Swedish Environmental Research Institute.

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