STADLER, the globally-active German company specialised in the planning, production and assembly of turnkey sorting plants, has completed a new high-performance paper and cardboard sorting facility for Italian multi-utility company Iren in Collegno, in the Turin area. Built in partnership with Pellenc ST, a leader in intelligent sorting equipment, the facility marks a major step forward in Turin’s circular economy infrastructure.
The plant, which has a capacity of eight tonnes per hour, is the first of its kind capable of sorting six different types of paper products, including multilayer materials. Its innovative layout, compact design and advanced automation meet Iren’s demand for operational flexibility, capacity, reliability and quality output, delivering a solution adapted to both current and future requirements.
“We are proud to continue our longstanding partnership with Iren through this new project in Collegno,” said Paolo Cravedi, Senior Project Manager at STADLER. “This plant is the result of close collaboration and shared commitment to sustainability, technical innovation and performance.”
The Collegno plant stands out as a technological milestone in paper and cardboard recycling. It is the first facility to separate six different types of paper-based output materials within a single sorting line: large cardboard, deinking paper, white paper, fine paper, multilayer material with aluminium and multilayer without aluminium.
The process starts with dosing and mechanical separation using STADLER’s double-deck PPK2000 and STT2000 ballistic separators, which sort out large cardboard and fine material, respectively. Medium-sized material, containing various types of paper, then progresses to six Pellenc ST COMPACT+™ optical sorters that utilise Near Infrared (NIR) and visible spectroscopy and are equipped with CNS BRAIN™, the company’s latest AI integrated software, to identify the different types of paper.
“CNS BRAIN™ enables us to tackle new use cases in the sorting of fibrous materials, particularly in distinguishing between white paper and white cardboard, which are visually similar but differ in value,” explained Matteo Loiacono, Sales Manager Italy at Pellenc ST. “This AI-powered system plugs directly into our optical sorters without additional infrastructure or energy consumption, offering a powerful, robust and efficient solution.”
Each fraction undergoes a manual quality control and automatic composition analysis before being baled and stored. The system also includes direct bypasses and flexible feeding options to accommodate variations in input and demand, aligning the plant’s design with the evolving dynamics of the recovered paper market.
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