Burkasan uses Tomra Recycling’s sorting machines in its new plastic recycling plant. The plant equipped with Tomra’s Autosort and Autosort Flake is capable of sorting 5 tons of waste per hour, including PET, HDPE, PP, enabling them to be brought back in the loop and the economy for further usage.
The new plastic recycling plant established by Burkasan with an investment worth 50 million TL proves to be highly innovative: The new plastic recycling plant established by Burkasan with an investment worth 50 million TL proves to be highly innovative: for the first time, a recycling plant in Turkey processes mixed plastic containers using the most advanced sensor-based sorting solutions from Tomra Sorting Recycling to get excellent results in the production of PET Flakes and HDPE granules.
Vedat Kılıç, Chairman of Board at Burkasan said: “We set ourselves the target to produce the best raw materials out of waste plastic by using Tomra’s optical sorting machines. Technological equipment is of utmost importance for us and a prerequisite for reaching the product quality and capacity we targeted. On our way to achieving a purity level of 99 percent allowing us to offer our products to the major global companies, we chose to work with Tomra as a global leader in providing state-of-the art sensor-based sorting solutions.”
Indicating that Burkasan Atık Yönetimi ve Çevre Danışmanlık is the first licensed recycling company in Bursa and one of the first in Turkey, Kılıç continued; “Before 2005 and the introduction of the packaging waste regulation by the Ministry of Environment, our sector has continued operations based on the concept of scrap. Therefore, waste management company destroyed the concept of scrap dealer in the sector by managing all processes professionally. We are now trying to also contribute to this sector development in Turkey. A good example to this is the foundation of our first fridge destruction plant in Turkey. And now we are leading the way once again in the area of recycling plastics. Our plant will be first one to make almost original plastic bottles out of plastic waste.”
Recycling sector development and automation in Turkey
With regards to the recycling sector in Turkey, Vedat Kılıç adds; “The Turkish industry produces about 75-80 million tons of waste per annum. As for domestic wastes, the daily amount of personal waste reaches 1.1 kg. Therefore, the amount of domestic waste produced every year is estimated to be 33- 35 million tons. Such volumes of domestic waste include 7-8 million tons of recyclable waste comprising metal, black glass, aluminium and plastic, of which 1-1.5% by weight of the total household waste is HDPE. However, to our regret, only 1-1.5 million tons can be collected, recycled and brought back in the loop. The remaining 6-6.5 million tons become garbage and are not given a second, third or fourth life. This is turn proves to be a big loss for our sector.
Although the recycling sector in Turkey keep growing, there is still a raw material shortage which leads us to continue importing waste as raw material. This is one of the reasons, why we attach great importance to using sorting technologies which can extract valuable materials from mixed waste streams and thus ensure the production of high quality recyclates. To attain these objectives, we invested in the leading optical sorting technologies of Tomra. Thanks to the machine’s high performances, we can realize high levels of output and greater recovery, which in the end is a factor that boost our profitability.”
Ready for increased input triggered by deposit systems
Stating that they have made 120 million TL of investment in waste management sector in the last five years, Burkasan Chairman of the Board Vedat Kılıç drew attention to the compulsory deposit practice intended to start in 2021; “Since this practice will trigger a fast increase in the rate of waste collection in our country, there is a need for high-capacity facilities where the collected beverage bottles can be sorted and recycled. Therefore we designed our new plant with the requirements of the deposit system in mind. This is one of the reasons why we preferred Tomra machines. We planned to get ready for the future with high technology investments.”
