Dekura - formerly Polypro Ltd, based in Telford, Shropshire, is the UK's leading PVC-U recycler, collecting waste form more than 1,000 window and door fabricators nationwide. They are not only able to recycle waste generated in the fabrication process but also post-consumer waste generated from old early generation PVC-U windows, doors, roofline and rainwater goods.

Customer requirements

Waste is processed in size reduction equipment. Once broken down, powerful magnets remove ferrous metals. Further manual inspection remover other less magnetic materials and non-ferrous materials. Then, shakers help to sort materials sizes ready for reprocessing. Further, more refined, processing remover any remaining debris, for example tiny fragments of metal or rubber. This is followed by colour sorting. This completes the process and the material is ready to be compounded into pellets or pulverised into a powder ready to use in a new generation of advanced products.

Because of the demand for their services, Dekura needed to increase the capacity of their Telford plant. The original plant at Telford uses a combination of positive pressure pneumatic and vacuum conveying systems to move material between processes.

Spiroflow solutions

Spiroflow supplied 2 Big Bag Dischargers, 2 Rigid Bin Dischargers, 3 Big Bag Fillers, a Fountain Blender and ten Flexible Screw Conveyors to Dekura at the beginning of 2007. As Dekura's Environment and Development Manager, Sean Heath, comments, "We are pleased with the design of the equipment and the quality of the workmanship. Our operators like the plant - it looks after itself". All of the controls for this equipment were designer and manufactures by Spiroflow such that they could be integrated into the PLC systems that control the new Pulverising and Compounding lines. One of the Big Bag Dischargers is furnished with massagers so it can deal with difficult bags that have become compacted during transportation or contain non-free flowing chopped material.

When asked why they chose Flexible Screw Conveyors to move material between processes in the new plant, Sean Heath advises, "The original plant is more expensive to run, it is fairly noisy and of course we have to have a filtration system to remove the dust from the exhaust air. I know of Flexible Screw Conveyors from a previous life; they are quiet in operation, have low running costs, do not require any filtration and have the added advantage that they continually re-mix as they convey - very important for blended materials.