New short-sea traffic involving domestic and export shipments of recycled glass will start at the port of Southampton, UK later in 2002, following the completion there of a new facility for Midland Gl…
New short-sea traffic involving domestic and export shipments of recycled glass will start at the port of Southampton, UK later in 2002, following the completion there of a new facility for Midland Glass Processing. The first of its type in Britain, this plant is a joint development between Midland and ABP, which is providing the land and the purposed-designed building. Midland, which is investing more than GBP 1 million in the project, is one of Britain“s leading glass recycling companies and has supplied all the interior equipment. ABP“s investment has not been disclosed. In the first year of operation the plant is expected to process up to 30,000 tonnes of recycled glass from bottle banks and other sources throughout the country. The glass is cleaned, scanned by lasers and bulked up, producing cross-graded clean glass or cullet, which is only allowed to have a 5% level of contamination in it. It is this product that will be shipped to domestic bottle making plants in Scotland and Ireland and can be exported potentially to any market in the world. Midland has a 10-year contract agreed with Hampshire County Council for the facility, which will have an annual throughput capacity of 100,000 tonnes. “At present around 500,000 tonnes of glass are recycled in Britain each year,” said a spokesman for Midland. “But this is expected to double under European legislation by 2006. We have a plant in the Midlands at Kirkby-in-Ashland and we were sending the recycled glass to coastal bottle-making plants, so it made sense to locate this new plant on the coast.” Initially, the glass for recycling will arrive in Southampton by road but it is hoped this can be transferred to rail in time or even brought in by sea. All outbound movement, on the other hand, will be by sea as the Scottish and Irish bottle plants are all near to port facilities.