Case Study - Adshead Ratcliffe & Co Ltd Landfill waste reduced in volume by 95%

Adshead Ratcliffe & Co Limited www.arbo.co.uk  based in Belper, Derbyshire are leading UK Sealant Manufacturers who identified a cost and landfill problem with sealant tube scrap.

Roger Sheehan and Steve Brown from Adshead Ratcliffe explained ‘We accumulate empty sealant tubes from sealant trials and batch tests, some of which are marked with hazard triangles, these are completely empty and non hazardous HDPE plastic waste; but because of the printed marking the waste companies understandably have to take special precautions which are not necessary.
We have traditionally disposed of the empty scrap tubes in specialised waste containers, and saw an opportunity to drastically reduce our landfill impact, and the high costs associated with it.  We wanted to safely and economically granulate the tubes to reduce the bulk and at the same time destroy the printed information.’

Steve Brown explained ‘we spoke to our tube supplier, who recommended STV Limited. STV supply the Shini range of granulators which our supplier uses, so we made contact with STV, who came and looked at our components, and took away samples for trial.

STV then advised us on the machine that suited our requirements and throughput, and we then sent down five 200 litre drums full of tubes to run a trial. Roger and I visited STV’s Milton Keynes works, and ran the product through ourselves in their showroom using the Shini SG2336 granulator with built in cyclone. We found that five 200 litre drums full of HDPE tubes were quickly granulated with minimum dust, and when the resulting granulate barely filled one 200 litre drum, we knew immediately we had found the right solution!’

Before - Empty tube taking lots of space		After - granulate occupies 95% less space

The Adshead team went away and did a full budget and payback analysis and found the cost saving in waste charges alone paid back the investment in less than a year, with added benefits of saving space storing bulky scrap, and significantly reducing Adshead Ratcliffe’s environmental impact.

Adshead Recycling Cell