Bunting-Redditch 2023 Review
By Paul Fears | 11 December 2023
Despite the global economic uncertainty, at least partially generated by conflict and fuel prices, Bunting-Redditch registered another successful year in 2023. In this blog post, we look back at the year.
January
The year started with an announcement that Bunting-Redditch registered a record-breaking year in 2022, driven by high-demand from the recycling sector.
Highlighting the importance of recycling, the first exhibition of the year for Bunting-Redditch was the 21st International Electronics Recycling Congress (IERC 2023) held in Salzburg, Austria (18-12 January). Many companies have identified the value of metals lost to landfill from e-waste (WEEE) and Bunting-Redditch is working with recyclers to find optimum recovery processes.
In complete contrast, magnetic separators and metal detectors are also used widely in food manufacturing. A post at the end of January reviewed the metal contamination related food safety alerts issues by the UK Food Standards Agency in 2022. An issue that affected companies including Tesco and Superdrug.
February
In February, there was a focus on the Bunting-Redditch team. Adrian Coleman and Alison Flower assumed new roles of Technical Director for all Bunting’s European operations and General Manager respectively.
In response to the growth in the supply of solutions and equipment to the recycling sector, Bunting Technical Sales Engineer, Tom Higginbottom, joined the British Metal Recyclers Association’s Young British Metals Recyclers (YBMR) committee.
March
Bunting-Redditch has a rich history of developing and supplying high-intensity magnetic separators to the mineral processing and mining sectors. This resulted in Wardell Armstrong, a leading global consultancy for mining and mineral processing, has acquired a laboratory-scale Wet High Intensity Magnetic Separator (WHIMS) from Bunting. The laboratory WHIMS is for the consultancy’s material test facility located in Cornwall, United Kingdom. The laboratory-scale WHIMS is part of Bunting’s range of small-scale high-intensity magnetic separators.
Bunting-Redditch has strong ties with the local University of Birmingham and second year students from the Chemical Engineering faculty visited the site to gain a better understanding of the UK’s strong engineering and manufacturing sector. During the visit the students saw heavy engineering manufacturing and witnessed material tests in the Customer Experience Centre.
April
The development of Bunting’s European management team continued with the appointment of Bradley Greenwood as the European Sales Manager. Bradley heads up a sales team and representative network covering the whole of Europe.
Successfully developing export business was highlighted with the sale of a large towable Electromagnetic Sweeper for logistics company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This was the company’s third purchase.
May
The second exhibition for Bunting-Redditch in 2023 was Interpack 2023 (4-10 May, Düsseldorf, Germany). The exhibition proved very successful with enquiries for a wide range of contamination identifying equipment such as metal detectors and magnetic separators.
June
The exhibition trail continued in June with attendance at the Plastics Recycling World Expo Europe (14-15 June, Messe Essen, Germany). Discussions at the appropriately timed exhibition focused on the ongoing pressure for the plastics sector to address waste concerns. Successful plastic recyclers and industry experts were brought together with the aim of improving plastic recycling rates.
July
Plastics recycling was again to the fore with the news that a large UK plastic recycler had purchased a Bunting Metal Separation Module. The Module, featuring a Drum Magnet followed by an Eddy Current Separator, removes ferrous and then non-ferrous metals from <20mm plastic flake.
July also witnessed the installation of a new 12.5 tonne crane at Bunting’s Redditch manufacturing site. The new crane was installed by local crane specialist AG Cranes Ltd, who supplied both the new single girder overhead travelling crane and pillar mounted slewing jib crane. This latest investment enhances Bunting’s ability to design and manufacture large magnetic separators such as Electro Overband Magnets for the mining and recycling sectors.
September
September and October are always busy times of the year for exhibitions. The first exhibition was PLAST 2023 (5-8 September 2023, Milan, Italy), where live demonstrations on the Bunting stand showed equipment including metal detectors, eddy current separators and drawer filter magnets removing metal from virgin and recycled plastic.
At the same time, the Bunting team was exhibiting at the International Congress for Battery Recycling – ICBR (6-8 September, Valencia, Spain). In the latest reported European statistics, around 229,000 tonnes of portable batteries and accumulators were sold in the European Union (EU) in 2020, with 99,000 tonnes being collected as recyclable waste. Bunting is working with a number of recyclers to develop processes to recover the metals within batteries.
Bunting’s newly appointed Indian representative NPK India exhibited in India at two international textiles shows, techtextil India (12-14 September, Mumbai) and Nonwoven Tech Asia (26-28 September, Delhi). At the show, Bunting promoted their range of metal detectors specifically designed for identifying pins and other metal in textiles.
The export focus continued with the announcement of a new distributor in Turkey for the food sector. Istanbul-based Empathy represents international companies in the food processing and packaging industry. The company provides complete processing and packaging solutions for food and beverage producers.
Bunting’s engineers continually seek to make equipment improvements leading to the announcement of a new manual-clean insert for the widely used Drawer Filter Magnet. With the new design, operators withdraw the complete drawer insert. Once clear, they then pull the tubes magnets through the front Perspex cover. Any metal contamination is drawn to the front of the plate, which is fitted with strong plastic washers that block the metal from moving outside the housing. As the tube magnet is withdrawn entirely, the captured metal is no longer magnetically held and falls under gravity into a waste collection chute.
October
The Skip & Waste Magazine featured an article looking at vital metal recovery from household waste. The article reviewed methods to maximise not only the recovery of both ferrous and non-ferrous metal, but also the purity.
Bunting supports charity initiatives across all worldwide sites and announced their support of Press Officer, Paul Fears, and fellow Dads taking on the #BikeBoatBoot challenge for South Wales children’s hospice Tŷ Hafan. The #BikeBoatBoot challenge involves travelling the length of Wales on off-road cycle paths, mountain hiking trails, and kayaking along the whole length of Lake Bala. The estimated distance is over 200 miles, with the team climbing nearly 18,000 feet.
One of the most high-profile projects of 2023 was securing an order from ICL Boulby to replace and upgrade Overband Magnetic Separators at the mine in North Yorkshire, UK. In early 2024, ICL will be installing four (4) ElectroMax-Plus Overband Magnets to provide enhanced screen, crusher and conveyor protection against tramp ferrous metal.
There was a return to plastics recycling with an article, first published by Power and Bulk Solids (August 2023), focusing on the separation challenges of recycling PET for plastic bottles. A combination of metal detectors and magnetic separators produce an end product that is 99.9% free of metal contamination.
November
The final post of 2023 returned to the issue of metal contamination in food. In one single month, the UK Food Standards Agency reported the recalling of 51 separate food products due to concerns about metal contamination. The food product recalls affected some of the UK’s largest supermarkets, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Aldi. Correctly specified and installed magnetic separators and metal detectors would have averted such costly recalls.
2024
We wish to thank everyone who has taken the time to read our posts in 2023. Our aim is to produce interesting and informative content that will assist companies using magnetic separators and metal detectors.
For further information on Magnetic Separators, Eddy Current Separator and Metal Detectors, please visit our website or contact us on:
Email: Michael Allen at mallen@buntingmagnetics.com
Telephone: +44 (0) 1527 65858
