STADLER Anlagenbau GmbH, the globally active German company specialising in the planning, production and assembly of turnkey recycling and sorting plants, has designed and built a state-of-the-art light packaging sorting plant for public enterprise Vaersa in Alzira, Spain.
The opening ceremony of the new Vaersa light packaging plant designed and built by STADLER in Alzira – a benchmark in the Spanish waste management sector – took place on the 3rd of July, in the presence of the leading local government representatives with environmental responsibilities Salomé Pradas, Councillor of Environment, Water, Infrastructure and Territory, Francisco Javier Sendra, Regional Secretary of Environment and Territory and Jorge Blanco, Director General of Quality and Environmental Education. Also in attendance were representatives of top management from Vaersa José Alberto Comos, General Manager and Raúl Esteban, Deputy Manager, as well as Ismael Avilés Ortega, Operations Manager Spain at STADLER, Vicent Estruch, President of the V4 Ribera-Valdigna Consortium and Alfons Dominguez, Mayor of Alzira.
Noelia Almiñana Lledó, Head of Vaersa's Waste Department, opened the proceedings by recalling the beginnings of the Alzira site with a manual sorting plant back in 2000. She highlighted the progress achieved through STADLER’s automation of the process and emphasized that the plant will ensure the correct recovery of light packaging from now on. José David Castillo Cáceres, Alzira Light Packaging Sorting Plant Manager, took over with a presentation of the new plant. A video of the construction project and the sorting line in operation closed the event.
Vaersa’s requirements: more capacity and quality through automation
Vaersa is a public enterprise reporting to the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Ecological Transition, and Climate Emergency of the Generalitat Valenciana (government of the Valencian Autonomous Community). It provides services related to environmental management, including waste management aimed at achieving a circular economy. It began managing the light packaging sorting infrastructure for the Valencian Community in 2000, coinciding with the implementation of separate waste collection. The facilities include the light packaging plant in Alzira, the oldest of the four it operates.
In 2023, Vaersa decided to invest in upgrading and expanding the capacity of the Alzira plant to address the increasing volumes of light packaging waste and to improve the quality of the output for recycling. As a public enterprise, it issued a call for tenders to award the project under the Public Sector Contracts Law. The tender criteria included designing the sorting line to prioritise maximising recovery, facilitate operation and ease of movement within the facility, and enhance operating efficiency through the placement of every piece of equipment and their implementation. Ergonomics and safety of plant personnel in all aspects of operation, from sorting tasks and quality control to cleaning, operation and maintenance were key for the project. The tender criteria also required to include an analysis of preventive and corrective maintenance, and measures to ensure the processing line’s modularity and flexibility.
STADLER presented a highly detailed preliminary project, which was the highest rated by the contracting committee, and was awarded the contract. Noelia Almiñana Lledó explains: “The Alzira Packaging Sorting Plant was the oldest of the VAERSA Plants and therefore the least automated. Our foremost and greatest challenge was to implement an automated processing line that would double the existing plant’s capacity in the same space. STADLER designed a compact process line that fits the available space, incorporating the most modern sorting technology without compromising its operation, performance and efficiency.”
