Sortera Edmonton: Two New Waste Processing Plants for Higher Recovery

The Challenge Facing Sortera

Waste processing plants operate in an extremely demanding environment. Heavy materials and continuous workloads place significant pressure on machinery, meaning reliability can begin to decline as a plant gets older.
At Sortera’s Edmonton facility, several challenges were affecting the performance of the existing plant. These included:

• The age and condition of the existing equipment
• Increasing volumes of waste entering the facility
• Declining reliability following years of heavy use
• Limitations in the fractions that could be separated
• Advancements in available sorting technology
• The cost of disposing of unrecovered material

The plant’s ability to consistently separate the required fractions had become a growing concern, both in terms of the volumes being recovered and the cost of disposal. Sortera therefore decided to modernise its production processes and invest in newer separation technologies.

Planning the Right Processing Solution

CRS NI worked with Sortera over an extended planning and design period to define the objectives of the project.
The two teams held multiple meetings and exchanged plant drawings over several months. Together, they considered which fractions Sortera wanted to recover, where those fractions should be separated, and which technologies would be best suited to each stage of the process. Several plant configurations were evaluated before the final design was agreed.
This detailed planning formed the basis for two new processing plants designed and built by CRS NI around Sortera’s specific recovery and operational requirements. As the Sortera team explained during the case study interview, the more time invested in planning, the easier and more seamless the execution becomes.

Building Two New Processing Plants Around Recovery

The two new processing plants integrate air separators, magnets, eddy current separators and optical sorters, creating more opportunities to recover valuable material fractions throughout the process.
Each technology was considered as part of the complete material flow. Magnets were included to support the recovery of ferrous metals, while eddy current separators allowed non-ferrous materials to be extracted. The optical sorters introduced an additional level of automated material identification and separation for rubble and wood.
Rather than focusing on individual machines, CRS NI designed the two plants around Sortera’s wider processing objectives and the specific points at which each fraction needed to be recovered.

Increasing Recovery and Reducing RDF

One of Sortera’s main objectives was to improve the speed of processing while increasing the number of materials that could be separated. The larger plants give Sortera more opportunities to recover fractions that may previously have continued through the process and ended up within the residual output.
According to Sortera, the upgraded system has delivered several important improvements:

• Faster processing
• Cleaner recovered materials
• Greater separation capability
• Higher throughput
• Lower RDF volumes at the end of the process
• Improved opportunities for stronger market rebates

Cleaner fractions can generate stronger commercial returns, while reducing RDF helps lower the amount of residual material requiring disposal or further treatment. The project therefore addressed both Sortera’s operational requirements and its wider commercial objectives.

CRS Involvement From Start to Finish

CRS NI supported Sortera throughout the complete project, beginning with the initial conversations about building two new plants and continuing through design, manufacturing, installation, and completion.
Dedicated project managers were assigned by both companies. Communication remained consistent throughout the project, with the teams speaking every day during implementation.

“CRS NI was fully involved from the first planning meeting through to the final day on site. The team was there from start to finish, communicating with us every single day during implementation to ensure a seamless execution.”

— The Sortera Project Team

This close collaboration allowed decisions to be made efficiently and ensured that the completed plants reflected the objectives agreed during the planning stage.

Two New Plants Built Around Sortera’s Requirements

The Edmonton project demonstrates the value of approaching plant development as a complete system rather than a collection of individual equipment upgrades. CRS NI designed and built two new processing plants around Sortera’s specific requirements, integrating advanced separation technologies into a complete material recovery solution.
The result is a system that provides greater material recovery, cleaner fractions, reduced RDF volumes and improved opportunities to achieve stronger rebates in the market.
For operators facing similar challenges with ageing infrastructure, growing waste volumes, or limited material recovery, CRS can design and manufacture a static waste processing plant around the specific requirements of the operation.