CWM Environmental has invested £15 million in the redevelopment of its Nantycaws Resource Recovery Facility in Wales, with seven TOMRA AUTOSORT™ units driving the site’s transition to fully automated sorting.

The facility, which entered full operation in July 2026, can process up to 80,000 tonnes of material per year, handling household co-mingled waste and commercial recyclable streams.

Advanced sorting configuration

The seven AUTOSORT units are deployed across specialised 2D and 3D sorting lines to recover OCC and separate polymers including PET, HDPE and PP. A seventh unit acts as a scavenger on the reject line, recovering misplaced target materials.

The multi-stage system is achieving more than 95% recovery purity.

The investment follows the destruction of the original plant by a lithium-ion battery fire in 2021 and replaces years of manual sorting with high-precision automated processing.

Technology and performance

According to CWM Environmental, TOMRA’s technology outperformed other solutions in evaluation trials, with improvements in purity, throughput and operational efficiency.

The project was commissioned by Colin White Services, which contracted McDonald International Limited to design and build the plant.

The redeveloped facility is designed to provide greater flexibility as waste streams change, while increasing resource recovery capacity and supporting the development of circular economy infrastructure in Wales.

Source: TOMRA Recycling