Commercial Recycling (Southern) Ltd has a recycling facility near Wimborne, where Volvo is the brand of choice and there is a longstanding relationship with the team at SMT GB, the Volvo Construction Machinery dealer.
“In line with our policy of keeping our equipment as fresh and up to date as possible, last year we made some significant investments in our mobile plant, as we needed to replace our three year old excavators and five year old loading shovels,” explains operations director Bill Watson. “We’ve been operating Volvo products for many years now, so we know the pedigree of the machines in terms of their overall productivity, reliability and good residual values. So replacing like with like, albeit with the latest updates and machine models, made perfect sense.”
Working in and around the transfer sheds at the Canford Recycling Centre, a new EW240E MH has taken over from a smaller three-year-old EW210E to increase handling capacity and turn high-sided bulkers more quickly.
With an elevating cab rising to 5.7 metres, the operator has good visibility of the work area. Equipped with a 6.5-metre straight boom, a 4-metre sorting arm and a Dehaco selector grab, the EW240E MH provides a maximum forward reach of 10 metres, as well as a maximum height of 12 metres, measured at the attachment pin. It has an 800-litre capacity grab and 3.7-tonne lifting capacity at maximum reach across carriage with its outriggers down.
Supporting the EW240E is a reduced-swing radius ECR145E crawler excavator, which has been mounted on 500mm rubber blocks, as opposed to the normal triple grouser steel track pads. This option was specified primarily to stop the machine from sliding about on the slippery ground conditions encountered in the sorting sheds. The ECR145E is the only excavator in its size class to be able to handle a 500-litre selector grab in conjunction with the long 3-metre dipper arm option. So a Dehaco DSG803 model with rotation has been fitted to this machine.
Also part of the fleet renewal is a new 12-tonne L60H, complete with rehandling bucket and top clamp. This puts a variety of material including wood, plasterboard and green waste into the sorting bays around the recycling sheds.
In addition, Commercial Recycling has replaced an L120H and L150H with new versions of the same models. The two updated wheeled loaders are in charge of loading a new screening plant, as well as loading recycled aggregates out onto road-going trucks. Both machines have been equipped with large 4m³ and 5.2m³ rehandling buckets and additional rehandling counterweights, respectively. The new L120H is the first of its kind to be sold in mainland Britain with the Optishift feature, which is optional on this model, but standard on the larger loading shovels.
Completing Commercial Recycling’s line-up is one of Volvo’s newest crawler excavators, the 20-tonne EC200E. Replacing a slightly larger EC220E, the new machine has been put to works on various activities around the plant and recycled aggregates area.
