Careful spin - MeWa Recycling Maschinen und Anlagenbau GmbH

NEWS
April 2008 Newsletter for customers and staff
New machine for electronic waste:
Careful spin
>>> Page 2
The topics:
MeWa International:
Tyre recycling in Kazakhstan
>>> Page 5
Market & trends:
The separation of refuse
scrap is becoming lucrative
>>> Page 6
Refuse-derived fuels (RDF)
are gaining in attractiveness
across Europe
>>> Page 8

Latest news
Careful spin
A new dismantler for electric and electronic appliances
The latest product
developed by MeWa
promises to disassemble
electric and electronic
waste gently. During the
disassembly, the Smash
Boom Bang (SB 2 ) leaves
contaminated parts such
as condensers and batteries
intact. That way, they
can be sorted out
without problems.
Waste skip – the end of the line. In accordance
with the WEEE directive, electric and
electronic waste no longer goes to landfill,
but is collected in special skips.
Throwing mechanism.
According to the EU directive
on WEEE (Waste Electrical and
Electronic Equipment) passed in
2005, all discarded electric and electronic
appliances have to be introduced into
the recycling process. In Germany alone,
industry expects a future volume of
more than 1 million tonnes of electric and
electronic waste.
The WEEE directive became legally
binding in Germany in March 2006. Since
then, containers for old appliances are
provided at the predominantly municipally
owned civic amenity sites.
MeWa‘s Smash Boom Bang is specially
designed for this fraction. This new
dismantler does away with the need
for time- and labour-intensive manual
pre-dismantling of electric appliances.
In a very short time, the innovative SB 2
dismantles the electronic waste. The
separated fractions, such as plastic parts,
circuit boards, cables, electric motors,
The new Smash Boom Bang
dismantles appliances with
gentle force.
This is how the SB² works
The electric and electronic waste is
fed into the turning drum of the Smash
Boom Bang. Actuators mounted on
the inside of the drum move the waste
material upwards; it then drops back
from a certain height.
A throwing mechanism located in
the centre of the machine retrieves and
transformers or other composite metal
assemblies are ready for sale or for further
processing. Contaminated parts, on the
other hand, can be easily sorted out.
The Smash Boom Bang is a particularly
economical and compact pre-dismantling
machine. It is particularly suited for
audio systems, household appliances,
computers, printers and scanners. The
separated fractions are easy to sell on,
while remaining assemblies can be further
disassembled in other machines, such as
the MeWa Cross-Flow Shredder QZ.
The disassembly technology of the
SB 2 makes it a very compact piece of
equipment. Its noise output is below 80
dBA. The SB 2 can thus be erected in any
factory hall without the need for additional
building measures. ■
accelerates the falling material and
throws it up again. The waste material
then hits the casing which causes it to
break up.
In that way, the SB 2 dismantles
appliances most efficiently, i.e. in a
short time and without unnecessary
force. And also with very little wear.
MeWa-News April 2008

New plant to recycle fridges brings
a fresh breeze to the Austrian market
From 2009, old fridges and freezers will be processed in Kematen in Lower Austria. Most exciting,
though: For the first time ever in Europe, a waste collection operator will take the processing of old
appliances into their own hands.
This is indeed a new development
in Europe. For the first time ever,
a company with responsibility
for the collection and recycling system
in a particular geographical area gets
actively involved
in the running of
a recycling plant.
For this task, the
Austrian UFH Holding
company has
gone into partnership
with Remondis,
a renowned specia-
Dr. Helmut Kolba list and fifth-largest
provider of recycling services in the world.
Remondis’s share in the joint venture will
be 49 %, while UFH retains the majority
with 51 %.
The current monopoly
The deciding factor for the unusual
step taken by UFH is the current market
situation in Austria. “Our joint venture
breaks the monopoly which currently
MeWa-News April 2008
exists in this market”, states Dr Helmut
Kolba, Managing Director both of UFH
Holding and the newly founded UFH REcycling
GmbH.
In their search for a suitable equipment
provider for the disposal of refrigeration
appliances, Austria’s
strict environmental
standard played a major
part, e.g. regarding the
recovery of CFCs. Other
desired criteria were efficient operation
and clean output fractions.
After research lasting more than two
years, these criteria led to a Type QZ MeWa
Cross-Flow Shredder with cryogenic CFC
separation.
“The latest MeWa technology is
massively different from that of its current
competitors”, is the positive view of Dr
Kolba in an interview with the Austrian
specialist journal Elektrojournal. Currently,
“Our customers
benefit from lower
prices“
Latest news
UFH has contracted the disposal of the
collected cooling appliances to a company
employing traditional shredder technology.
However, operating costs are
significantly higher than those of the
MeWa processing concept.
In addition, the new operators also
expect fractions that
are absolutely pure
and thus saleable at
premium prices. The
ever-increasing demand
for secondary raw material was one of
the reasons for their decision in favour
of MeWa.
It is envisaged that savings due to
increased efficiency will later be passed
on to the consumer. Managing Director Dr
Helmut Kolba promises: “Our customers
will benefit from the lower prices”.
From next year, the new plant in
Lower Austria is expected to process up to
350,000 fridges and freezers a year. ■

MeWa-International
Electric and electronic dismantling
with a single appliance
Wincanton expands by building a fully automatic plant
WEEE recycling to meet the highest standards: In the English Midlands, a fully automatic plant is going to be built to ensure the highest
output quality.
It was only two years ago that the
Wincanton Group, which is active
across all of Europe, started operating
a MeWa recycling plant for electric and
electronic waste in the north of England.
This plant had already been designed
for compliance with the WEEE directive
which came into force in the UK on
1 July 2007.
All it takes is a single machine
Now barely a year after the successful
launch of that plant, the logistics
company has decided to “make a
significant investment in this market”, as
announced at the end
of March by Gordon
Scott, Wincanton‘s
Managing Director.
“With the new location and MeWa’s
completely new processing concept,
Wincanton demonstrates its commitment
to recycling in compliance with the WEEE
directive. Our capability for offering
a nationwide service for processing,
sorting and the entire recycling process
is much enhanced with this new plant
in the Midlands”, the Wincanton MD
continued.
“We are committed
to the WEEE directive“
This step has been made possible with
a fully automatic plant designed by MeWa
for an annual throughput of 100,000
tonnes of electric and electronic waste.
The special aspect of this operation: all it
takes is a single machine to dismantle all
of this electric and electronic waste. All of
the work will be done by a MeWa 2500
HD Cross-Flow Shredder.
In subsequent processing steps,
high-grade plastics, circuit boards from
computers and appliances, stainless
steel, cables, electronic waste, aluminium
or even magnets are
automatically sorted
out and separated.
Only four to six
employees per shift are required to look
after this efficient machine and to ensure
its smooth operation. The recycling plant
near Birmingham is envisaged to start
operating from the end of 2008. ■
Wincanton, experts in
logistics, want to expand
their activities in the
recycling of electric and
electronic waste to cover
all of England. To that end,
they are building a fully
automated plant, in order
to achieve a higher ratio
of recovery of reusable
material and higher-quality
output at lower operating
costs. And all of this
can be achieved by a single
dismantling machine.
About the company
Wincanton operates across all of
Europe as a leading provider of
specialist logistical and distribution
services. In figures: 30,000 employees,
400 locations, an annual turnover of
2.8 billion euros.
MeWa-News April 2008

The innovative Kazakhstan –
tyre recycling in Eurasia
At first glance, Kazakhstan with its
expansive tracts of land, is mainly
dominated by agriculture.”
This is how Ulrich Hink and Wolfgang
Lautenbach described their impressions of
the Central Asian country. Equally striking,
though, to their eyes were the country‘s
development potential and the general
spirit of optimism. The Eurasian country
which borders on both Russia and China
boasts extensive oil and gas fields as well
as other raw material deposits.
An average annual economic growth
of more than 8 % is standard in the world‘s
seventh largest country. The pragmatic and
focused way in which the Kazakhs deal
with this economic boom is evident in their
capital city. It was only in 1997 that the
central city of Astana became the country‘s
Tyre mountains exist even in thinly populated
Kazakhstan.
MeWa-News April 2008
capital city. Since then, its population has
more than doubled to 700,000 inhabitants.
Everywhere new buildings shoot up, both
for administration and accommodation.
Companies of Western standards get
established in modern industrial estates.
In this environment of optimism and
progress, the two entrepreneurs expect a
market with a promising future. They want
to process old tyres into rubber granules,
a high-quality secondary raw material. To
achieve this aim, the cousins, both with
a background in the steel industry, will
commission a complete MeWa recycling
plant. In future, Kazakhstan Rubber Recycling
will process tyres of both cars and
lorries into a granulate with a grain size of
less than 4 mm, guaranteed to be free of
steel and textile fibres. This material can
then be used to produce moulded products
for use in road building or it can be added
to asphalt.
Apart from the formal negotiations,
Ulrich Hink and Wolfgang Lautenbach
experienced Kazakh hospitality with
the invitation to visit the wonderful
snow-covered landscape of the wide
steppe. Fortunately, temperatures were
comparatively mild at only minus seven
degrees, in contrast to the more usual
minus thirty in winter. Good for the
asphalt and good for travelling Central
Europeans! ■
MeWa-International
In Kazakhstan, a complete
tyre recycling plant providing
pre-shredding and granulation
is currently under construction.
MeWa accountants Ulrich Hink
and Wolfgang Lautenbach
paid a visit for talks with
local representatives. They
were met by friendly people
with outstanding hospitality,
a landscape of breathtaking
beauty and an up-and-coming
nation.
In front of the newly­built presidential
palace in Astana.
Kazakh hospitality: Wolfgang Lautenbach
flanked by business partners from Astana.
Extreme temperature differences between
icy cold winters and hot summer months
are the cause of frequent damage to road
surfaces (right).
The MeWa plant turns old tyres into granulate
free from contaminants and impurities.
This can be added directly to the asphalt
of the surface course to compensate for
the extreme variations in temperatures.

Market & trends
High prices for scrap make
the separation of refuse
scrap even more attractive.
The Scherrieble Group
has chosen a particularly
lucrative approach. The
result: absolutely pure and
high-quality iron scrap.
Clean separation of refuse scrap
Recycling in Germany is traditionally
understood as follows: householders
collect paper, glass, PET
bottles, aluminium and tin-coated steel.
These materials can be directly returned
to the production process.
The remaining general refuse contains
an unloved mix of rubbish and metal. The
first task is for this mix to be separated out.
The steel fraction, in particular, is separated
A clear separation: RDFs and metal scrap
from commercial waste.
out using magnetic separators. However,
these magnetic systems inevitably also
attract large quantities of textiles, plastic
films and other materials. In that state,
this fraction cannot be sold on as scrap.
Instead, it has been common practice so
far to feed it into incineration plants at a
considerable additional payment.
Additional payment is turned into
profit
High scrap prices have been the
motivator for the Scherrieble Group with
sites in Esslingen and Mannheim to look
for a new approach.
In their search for a suitable process
to separate the steel fraction cleanly from
the mix, the Scherrieble Group came
across the opportunities offered by the
MeWa QZ Cross-Flow Shredder. What
Refuse scrap is the name given to
the special mixed fraction of iron steel
and waste which is separated out from
domestic and commercial waste using
magnetic separators. Other materials
such as textiles or plastic films get
What is refuse scrap?
ultimately convinced company owner
Gunter Scherrieble to invest were “the
system advantages of shredding, MeWa‘s
many years of experience in the field and
the suitability of the planned equipment
which had proven its worth in several test
runs”.
MeWa‘s QZ turns a former loss maker
into a profitable business. The appliance
separates the refuse scrap with 100%
accuracy. The iron steel and the smaller
proportion of non-ferrous fraction can
then be sold on the market at a profit. The
remainder is further processed to refusederived
fuels (RDFs).
The amount of refuse scrap processed
by the QZ at the company‘s site in Esslingen
equates to an annual throughput of about
15,000 tonnes. ■
trapped in the scrap and are separated
out as well. The end result is cleaned
steel fraction with pulverised textile and
plastic. Separating this mix out is the
task of the QZ.
MeWa-News April 2008

Refuse-derived fuels (RDF) gain in attractiveness
Processing plants are on the advance all over Europe
Since 2005, it has been forbidden
in Germany to deposit domestic or
commercial waste in landfill sites.
All waste is initially separated into
organic and non-organic fractions. The
organic waste is treated in an anaerobic
digester and then further processed for
composting. The first processing step for
the non-organic fraction is the separation
of materials such as metal, wood and
paper. These can be sold on directly.
The remainder is a highly calorific mix
of materials, first and foremost plastic
packaging materials and plastic films,
– A Universal Rotary Sheare UC pre-shreds the waste on arrival
– Air separation with compressed air is used to separate the heavy from the light materials
– In addition, a mechanical vibrator separates the materials even more finely into different calorific fractions
– In a final preparatory step, an optical unit removes materials containing chlorine from the flow
– The remaining material is then processed into RDF in the Universal Granulator UG
– During the entire process, metal separators are used to separate out various metal fractions
The granulators used by MeWa in the
processing of domestic and commercial
waste as RDF are a sophisticated and
well-engineered product. Despite the
light weight of the input material,
they guarantee a high throughput at
MeWa-News April 2008
The consumption of
natural gas and crude oil
is rising across the globe.
The natural reserves
are diminishing. Prices
are rocketing sky-high.
An alternative are fuels
derived from commercial
and domestic refuse:
combustible materials with
high energy content. To
produce heat and electricity
in industry and power
stations.
A granulator emits the homogeneously
shredded RDF fraction.
but also mattresses and carpets. A special
market for these materials has developed
as an alternative to expensive
refuse incineration.
They are processed
into refuse-derived
fuel (RDF).
It is the task of the
recycling plants to separate
and process these highly
calorific materials in such a way
that they can be added directly
to fuels such as coal, oil or gas. In
particular, RDFs are burnt in furnaces
This is how RDF processing works in a MeWa plant
small mesh sizes. This results in very
homogenous grain sizes, ideally suited
for use in industry and power stations.
With 15 years of experience in
this field and numerous plants already
operational in Germany, projects for
Market & trends
in the cement industry, in steelworks or in
large power stations.
With the cost of oil and gas rising,
the process is becoming ever more
attractive – all over Europe. Currently,
waste processors still have to pay
cement companies for burning the
fuel in their furnaces. However, that
is expected to become less and less
common. The prerequisite for this,
though, is a refuse-derived fuel of high
quality. Once the homogenous material
– i.e. processed to a standard size –
also meets the threshold values for
the emission of pollutants in waste air,
it will have the chance of becoming a
long-term market commodity. ■
further plants across Europe are under
way. Just one example: the British Shanks
Group will soon start operating a MeWa
RDF plant in Belgium.

MeWa internal
Congress attendees impressed with MeWa plant
Participants from five continents met
in January for the 7th International
Electronics Recycling Congress (IERC)
in Salzburg. The highlight of the last
day of the IERC was a visit to the
Elektronik Altgeräte Recycling West
GmbH Höpperger.
Following a technical introduction
by Harald Höpperger (Managing
Director of Höpperger Recycling)
and Helmut Oberguggenberger (MeWa
Managing Director) into the operation of
the recycling plant, over 60 visitors from
the IERC were taken on a detailed guided
tour of the site.
In 2004, MeWa designed the plant for
an annual capacity of 17,000 tonnes and
provided the complete installation.
Tyrolean music with the “Rietzer Buam” – the lads from Rietz.
CREATING THE FUTURE
M A C H I N E S P L A N T S P R O C E S S S O L U T I O N S
Smiles despite the bad weather: the visit to Höpperger Recycling was much enjoyed
by attendees at the International Electronic Recycling Congress.
The heart of this recycling plant for
electronic waste in the Austrian town
of Pfaffenhofen is
the MeWa Cross-
F l o w S h re d d e r
QZ 2000. The visitors
were most
impressed to see
the plant operating
at capacity and also
by the quality of its
output. The guests
let the material run
through their hands,
MeWa at IFAT
The IFAT 2008 trade fair from 5 to 9
May in Munich is drawing closer. Mewa
Recycling Maschinen- und Anlagenbau
GmbH will be present at the world‘s largest
specialist international trade fair for the
environment and waste management with
a 480-sq m stand. MeWa will display its
entire range of machinery and appliances.
Centre stage at the stand in Hall C2,
Stand 425/524 will be the Smash Boom
Bang, the new dismantler for electric and
electronic waste. ■
and they all agreed its high degree of purity
made it ideal for selling on the market.
The day finished in great spirits with
hearty Tyrolean specialities, accompanied
by the local “Rietzer Buam” band with
their true Tyrolean sound, and was also
the conclusion of a most successful fourday
event. ■
Impressum
MeWa-News
Publisher:
MeWa Recycling Maschinen und
Anlagenbau GmbH
Gültlinger Straße 3, 75391 Gechingen
Tel. 0049 (0)7056 925-0
E-Mail: info@mewa-recycling.de
Editors: Harald Pandl (in charge),
Marius Hörrmann
Print: Druckhaus Weber GmbH,
Althengstett
Design: MeWa in cooperation with
Creativ-Werbung M. Dostal, Tiefenbronn
Title picture: MeWa QZ Cross-Flow
Shredder at work for the Scherrieble
Group, Esslingen
Photograph credits: MeWa, UFH (Page 3)
Publication frequency: 4 x per year
MeWa-News April 2008