TOMRA Recycling Sorting hosts event to celebrate the extension of its test facilities in Germany

“With more stringent legislation and higher recycling targets, the demand to recover recyclables from waste is at a record high and so is the demand for our sorting solutions and material tests. We’ve observed this situation over the last few years and came close to our test capacity limits in Germany. We had to act to ensure the best service for customers and partners”, states Fabrizio Radice, VP and Head of Global Sales and Marketing at TOMRA Recycling Sorting.
Previously, TOMRA’s test center incorporated both its waste and metal sorting solutions and is one of 8 facilities operated at 7 locations worldwide that give recyclers and plant operators the unique opportunity to test their materials on TOMRA’s advanced sorting machines before making an investment.


While the new facility allows the company to place a stronger emphasis on the metals segment, waste applications continue to play an equally important role. The original test center started as a mobile test station in Andernach, Germany, moved to Mülheim-Kärlich in 2009, and steadily grew in sophistication. Today, it offers 1.500 m2 for waste sorting trials. The test possibilities range from the recovery of recyclable polymers from mixed and source-separated waste streams, to flake sorting, the separation of wood by material type, and many more.
Also, deep learning technologies, as a subset of AI, are part of TOMRA’s product portfolio and can be tested in different sorting tasks. Available as a complementary solution to its core technologies, deep learning is a future-forward tool that helps improve sorting performance by detecting previously hard or impossible-to-detect materials. Summarizing the advantages of the new test center setup, Ralph Uepping stresses: “All our products are installed and can be tested in a complete circuit. Together with our expert teams, we can simulate the entire sorting process with eddy currents, magnets, screens and a ballistic separator. This allows us to demonstrate the importance of material pre-treatment and define processes that are stable and economically viable even with changing input streams.”
The opening of a new trial hall as well as the conference set the stage for TOMRA’s growth ambition, its commitment toward stakeholders and its mission to enable a world without waste. Customers and partners are invited to take the opportunity to work with TOMRA’s experts to specify the most suitable sorting solution for their requirements.
