Cireco Scotland has upgraded its materials recovery facility in Fife, bringing multiple sorting technologies together in one integrated system.

The project was designed and manufactured by KME in partnership with Blue Machinery Scotland, with technologies from Bunting, Recycleye, TOMRA and SPALECK integrated into the system.

Cireco processes around 100,000 tonnes of fully commingled paper, plastics and metal cans each year.

Multiple technologies, one MRF

TOMRA contributes four AUTOSORT optical sorting units, while SPALECK provides screening technology and Bunting equipment handles magnetic separation.

KME provides the engineering backbone, including conveyors and material-flow systems. The retrofit includes 27 new conveyors and an upgraded infeed system.

AI and robotic sorting

The latest upgrade adds four Recycleye QuantiSort 2.0 AI sorting units alongside three existing Recycleye QualiBot robotic pickers.

The system is designed to automate quality control and enable full recirculation through the back-end sorting stages.

Recycleye CEO Victor Dewulf has described the configuration as potentially the UK’s first fully automated MRF without manual back-end quality-control picking stations, combined with full data analytics across the back-end lines.

The project shows how modern MRFs are increasingly combining AI, optical sorting, robotics, screening and mechanical separation into a single automated processing system.

Source: KME, Recycleye, TOMRA