Swiss-based Eberhard has made a major investment into a new recycling plant of 200 tons per hour that will convert mixed construction and demolition (C&D) waste into valuable secondary raw materials. Advanced AI and smart robotic waste sorting technologies by ZenRobotics will be used at the plant to capture high purity fractions from C&D waste, the company announced.
The Eberhard Group is building a new state-of-the-art recycling plant called EbiMIK (short for Eberhard - materials in circulation) in Oberglatt, Switzerland, to be completed by fall 2021. The new plant will feature an advanced robotic sorting system by ZenRobotics that includes two parallel lines with multiple high capacity heavy duty robots on each line. The job of the robots is to capture high-value and high-purity materials from mixed construction and demolition waste. These recycled materials recovered by the robots will be converted at the plant into circular raw materials of equal quality as primary materials.
C&D waste is a considerable source of secondary waste materials worldwide. In the European Union, it makes up approximately one third of the total waste generated. The EU’s target is to recover, recycle or reuse at least 70 percent of this waste by the end of 2020. At present, many of the material streams from C&D waste are, however, not suitable for reuse or high-grade recycling. Instead, mixed construction waste is still widely used today as low grade material or is even dumped. In Switzerland, 10 percent of the total 7.5 million tons of C&D waste generated per year is sustainably recycled today, as per the press release. Eberhard’s investment into the new high-capacity recycling centre enables the company to boost the highest quality secondary raw materials for its customers and helps to lift recycling rates in the C&D industry. In addition to the plant, a raw material storage and a component production facility are also being built for the recycling centre.
“The ZenRobotics robots with AI are a very important part of our revolutionary recycling plant EbiMIK. EbiMIK converts mixed demolition waste into fully circular secondary raw materials. Mixed demolition waste no longer needs to be downcycled into low grade materials or even landfilled,” said Patrick van der Haegen, Division Head Development at Eberhard.
“The Eberhard Group is an early pioneer in heavy duty C&D sorting robots. The family business made its first investment into ZenRobotics’ smart autonomous waste sorting robots back in 2015. We are delighted that Eberhard is now multiplying its robot count by reinvesting into our advanced robot waste sorting system as part of this groundbreaking new plant investment,” said Juha Mieskonen, Head of Sales at ZenRobotics.