CWM Environmental has completed a £15 million ($20.2m) redevelopment of its Nantycaws Resource Recovery Facility (RRF) in Carmarthenshire, Wales, with seven automated sorting units from Tomra now operating at the site.
The facility entered full operation in July 2026 following the completion of its commissioning programme, replacing the manual sorting operation used after a 2021 fire destroyed the original plant.
The redeveloped RRF can process up to 80,000 tonnes of material a year, including co-mingled dry mixed recyclables and segregated recyclable waste from commercial and household sources.
Operating on a single-shift, 40-hour working week, the facility has also been designed to process kerbside-sorted material for Carmarthenshire County Council, with this stream scheduled to begin in mid to late autumn 2026.
Tomra Autosort units
Seven Tomra Autosort units have been installed across the facility’s 2D and 3D sorting lines. Two units on the 2D line work in sequence, with the first removing non-fibre materials for transfer to the 3D line and the second extracting brown old-corrugated containers.
Four units on the 3D line separate polymer streams, including clear PET, clear HDPE, mixed colour HDPE and PP. A final sorting stage recovers other plastics, including mixed colour PET.
A seventh unit operates as a scavenger on the reject line, recovering target materials that have passed through the main sorting process and returning them to the start of the line.
The system is achieving recovery purity levels of more than 95 per cent, according to CWM Environmental.
‘Forefront of the industry’
Paul Wakelin, head of operations at CWM Environmental, said: “After the challenges of the 2021 fire and the subsequent years of operation which relied on manual sorting, this £15m investment allows us to operate at the very forefront of the industry.”
Wakelin said the facility can now meet the purity requirements of domestic and international reprocessors, while increasing processing capacity and resource recovery.
Terry Keyworth, regional director UK and Ireland at Tomra Recycling, said the project had focused on creating a process capable of adapting to changes in incoming waste streams.
