Looking ahead to 2018, one early highlight of TOMRA Sorting’s year will be the introduction of AUTOSORT
BLACK, the first machine capable of sorting black plastic packaging materials. Whereas sensor-based sorting technology based on near-infrared (NIR) detection is unable to detect or differentiate between black plastics, the BLACK plastic sorter can sort differing polymers such as black PE, black PP, black PET, and styrene. To enable this process, the AUTOSORT machine first recovers the valuable black plastic materials, which are normally part of residue streams, to create a black single stream.