This project supported a large food manufacturer specialising in ready meals. The customer was generating significant volumes of packaged food waste, which was taking up valuable space on site and creating additional costs through the need to pay a local anaerobic digestion plant to depackage the material on their behalf.
By installing an on-site depackaging solution, the customer wanted to process waste as it was generated, reduce storage requirements, and recover food waste in a form suitable for onward transport.
Project at a glance
– Industry: Food manufacturing
– Location: England
– Application: Depackaging out of spec or out of date ready meals
– Solution: ER1800 depackaging machine
– Processing Capacity: Up to 4m3/hr
The challenge
The customer’s existing approach meant large volumes of packaged food waste had to be stored on site before being sent away for depackaging. This was using up valuable operational space and creating a reliance on a third-party anaerobic digestion facility to complete the separation process. The packaged waste was bulky and inefficient to manage, increasing storage pressure and handling requirements.
The customer needed a compact, reliable solution that could be installed on site, process the material quickly, and separate the food from the plastic packaging before the recovered food waste was transported onward.
The solution
An ER1800 machine was supplied to provide the customer with an on-site depackaging solution capable of processing up to 4 m³/hr.
Material is loaded into a small feed hopper before passing through the Dominator, where the food is separated from the plastic packaging. The recovered food falls into a dolav positioned beneath the machine, while the plastic packaging is also discharged into a separate dolav under the machine. From there, the recovered food is tipped into an open-top trailer for onward transport, and the plastic is placed into a compactor for disposal or recycling. This simple layout allows the customer to manage food and packaging streams separately while keeping the process compact and efficient.
The outcome
The installation has freed up large amounts of space on site because the customer no longer needs to store packaged food waste for off-site depackaging. Waste can now be processed as it is generated, reducing the amount of bulky material held on site and improving overall housekeeping.
Once processed, the recovered food waste is reduced in volume by approximately 4:1, making it far more efficient to store and transport in the open-top trailer. The separated plastic packaging is collected separately and transferred to a compactor, keeping it out of the recovered food stream.
Overall, the ER1800 has helped the customer reduce reliance on third-party depackaging, lower the volume of material requiring storage, and create a cleaner, more efficient waste-handling process on site.
