Angus Council’s new shredder draws interest from neighbouring councils

Angus Council is one of the 32 local government council areas of Scotland.

With a population of 115,000, there are around 20,000 households that pay to have their garden waste collected each fortnight, alongside commercial green waste collections.

Every year, 30,000 tonnes of this green waste are processed at their green waste recycling facility in Forfar. Once the green waste has been shredded, the resulting compost is organised into windrows. Once the windrows have gone through the maturation phase, the material is screened using a trommel with a 20mm drum. The finished product is then sold to local farmers and agricultural contractors as a soil enhancer, as well as being available to residents for free.

The slow speed shredder used by the Angus Council was almost 10 years old and was beginning to show its age. There were signs of general wear and tear, and the amount being spent on spare parts to keep the machine running at the required throughput tonnages was becoming uneconomical.

The council took the decision to look for a new shredder, and a tender was published detailing their requirements for the new machine. Over 50% of their green waste intake was from kerbside collections, meaning most of the waste being processed was grass cuttings, which is difficult to shred once it begins to decompose. They will also be faced with root balls, therefore the council stipulated that the new shredder must have a twin shredding shaft configuration, to combat these difficult materials.

Another key point for Angus Council was fuel efficiency. They required a robust machine that could deal with their challenging material, whilst operating with low fuel consumption. Blockages was an issue the new machine had to combat. Their old shredder suffered frequent blockages which would have to be manually cleared, which heavily impacted on their efficiencies and throughput stats.

Following the publication of the tender, along with understanding the challenges within the conditions presented, CRJ proposed that the Haas Tyron 2000XL 2.0 would not only meet but exceed their requirements.

The Haas Tyron 2000XL 2.0 is a powerful and versatile twin shaft shredder, capable of dealing with a range of materials whilst producing consistent products at impressive throughput volumes.

One of Angus Council’s main objectives was to reduce the amount of time spent clearing blockages, which was an issue with their previous single shaft shredder. The Haas Tyron benefits from two independently driven shafts, which can reverse and automatically detect blockages.

Once a blockage is detected, the shafts will continue to try and shred the contents of the shredding chamber for a minimum of 3 attempts (can be manually increased). If unsuccessful, the shafts will reverse, and liberate any material causing the blockage.

This process is completed without the need for downtime, and critically, there is no need for personnel to enter the shredding chamber, making the whole process safer.

CRJ went to visit Aiden Devlin – Site Green Waste Controller at Angus Council’s Forfar green waste recycling facility, to see how their new Haas Tyron 2000XL 2.0 was performing.

Aiden explained that the new Haas Tyron 2000XL 2.0 was performing excellently.

‘Comparing tonnage throughput with their previous shredder, the Haas is shredding almost three times the amount of green waste in the same time frame, whilst producing a product of equal size and quality’.

When asked what his favourite feature was, he said:

‘The option to change each shaft speed and direction independently from one another, dependent on the material you are processing’.

The various settings mean the shredder is working at its optimum. With one touch of a button, the shredder configuration can be changed to cater to the variety of Green Waste forms faced by the Council.

Following the success of the new machine, Angus Council hired their Haas Tyron to a neighbouring council to process their own green waste. This work was previously carried out by an external third party, who used a high-speed shredder.

The neighbouring council were so impressed with the performance of the Haas Tyron that an agreement has been made to hire the machine from Angus Council every 4-6 weeks to process their own waste. This arrangement was made possible by the higher throughput of the Tyron seen at Angus Council, allowing the machine to be available for the neighbouring council. This saves the council money and increases their operational efficiencies.