Genox recycling plant helps fast

D&M Waste Management started in 2001 as a bulk waste transport business, with current General Manager, Daniel Taylor, taking over in 2012. The business has since evolved to become a leading player in the waste management industry and has more recently made the move into the recycling arena.

The company has several contracts with local government authorities throughout Perth and the north-west of Western Australia for bulk verge waste collection including green waste, general waste and recyclables.

Daniel says while the move into plastics recycling was something the company had been considering for a while, it was fast-tracked by the national export ban on waste high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics in 2021. The ban coincided with the launch of the Federal Government's Recycling Modernisation Fund, which D&M successfully obtained. This funded a significant part of the Genox recycling plant that the company purchased.

"We were extremely grateful for the financial support we received from the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, which allowed us to enter the recycling market quicker than we anticipated," Daniel says.

The Genox brand has been distributed and supported exclusively by Applied Machinery since its entry into the Australian market. Today more than 300 companies in Australia have Genox equipment installed, making it one of Australia's leading suppliers of recycling machinery.

Daniel contacted Applied Machinery to see what options were available for a plant built specifically to handle pipe shredding. Once a proposal was received, Daniel and his team looked carefully into experiences other companies had with Genox and Polystar equipment.

"We contacted a couple of recycling businesses that were already operating this brand of equipment and the feedback was extremely favourable," Daniel says. "It gave us the reassurance to proceed with the purchase."

D&M selected a recycling plant with several standard Genox modular components, including a shredder specifically for plastic pipes. The J-Series pipe shredder is a multi-rotor design with long-life counter knives, ideal for shredding different diameter and sized pipes. After the pipes are shredded and granulated, they go through a sink float tank and then a friction washer, centrifugal dryer and finally into a hopper for melting. The molten plastic is then re-pelletised to produce clean dry pellets.

The waste plastics are sourced from several areas including decommissioned HDPE pipes from old bore fields; pipe that was not suitable for reuse along with old bin lids; and various plastic off-cuts from local industry.

In something of an alignment of the planets and a case of vertical integration, D&M's move into recycling coincided with an opportunity to partner with sister company Hydra Storm which had recently installed a new plastic pipe extrusion line producing a range of HDPE corrugated pipe for stormwater drainage applications.

Daniel says the clean, dry HDPE resin that the Polystar plant produces is ideal for feeding into the Hydra Storm pipe extrusion line, with any excess resin being offered to the market at a discounted rate, compared to imported, virgin HDPE resin.

The recycling plant was up and running from 10 August 2022. The throughput has gradually increased since that time and the plant is now matching the capacity of the extrusion plant – the ideal scenario.

"With both companies operating from the same facility this entire set-up would have to be one of the best examples of true circular economy processing," Daniel says.

He says his experience with Applied was positive.

"The whole process from quotation through to delivery was pretty much seamless," he says.

"While we handled installation ourselves, we called upon Applied's after sales service for help in resolving a couple of minor issues and we found the service excellent. Having local support that we can call on quickly is very important to us and a key component of our decision to partner with Applied."

With a successful move into recycling the future looks bright for D&M. Daniel says the company has a number of other initiatives in the wings which will establish it as a key player in the recycling industry.

For more information, visit: www.appliedmachinery.com.au

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