Furnishing Frimstone

Frimstone Limited, which has 13 sites throughout East Anglia recently approached Blue Central to help them find the right equipment for a new RDF processing plant at their Wisbech site.

Traditionally the business is a supplier of aggregates to the construction market. Mark Davenport, joint owner of Frimstone and previous owner of Donarbon has a long history in Waste and led the Frimstone bid for Norfolk’s Residual Waste Contract during 2015. Frimstone saw an opportunity for development and growth as well as assisting the local community, and were awarded part of the contract to take the residual waste from Kings Lynn & West Norfolk late in 2015.

Although not previously a customer of Blue, their equipment was recommended to Operations Director at Frimstone, Sharon Spain who said, “After speaking to a number of other businesses in the sector about potential new equipment we were advised by several to talk to Blue. And although we had to move quickly with the start of the contract fast approaching, we went to see it in action and were suitably impressed”.

The Equipment

Ultimately Frimstone purchased three key pieces of equipment from Blue Central. Council vehicles bring in the council’s domestic bin waste from both transfer stations and the curb side, which is initially loaded in to a Doppstadt DW 3060 shredder. This single shaft shredder offering 428Hp shreds the material down to around 300-400mm. The direct drive however means the machine is highly efficient allowing the 42 teeth along the 3m shaft to do its work with low ongoing costs.

From the shredders front conveyor the material is fed onto a blue baler feed conveyor with load sensing speed control, before it is loaded in to a Marathon 2R310 wide body twin ram baler. The baler produces and impressive 142.5 tonnes of compression force, creating bales which weigh in excess of 1 tonne. The bales are then transferred to the final piece of machinery purchased from Blue for this process, the highly impressive Cross Wrap Direct. This wraps the bales without the use of any steel or plastic, meaning low ongoing operating costs, plus is fully automated so also saves on manual labour. Finally the bales are loaded onto curtain sided vehicles, transported overseas and used for the production of RDF energy.

Sharon also spoke about the support she received from Blue. “During the commissioning the best thing for me was that I was calling your guys at 7pm in the evening and they were always available. It was that availability and the service that we found really helpful”.