Client:
Lion Dairy & Drinks
Location:
Malanda Queensland

The system allowed the customer to be able to recover expired milk from its containers with sufficient quality and purity to be saleable to livestock producers and also recover saleable recyclable packaging free from milk residue to sell to plastic recyclers.

Challenge

Lion is one of Australasia’s largest food and beverage companies, employing over 7,000 people across Australia and New Zealand.

Their milk processing division in Queensland contacted Waste Initiatives to discuss options for a system to separate expired milk products from the recyclable containers enabling them to sell the milk to livestock producers and sell the recyclable plastic to a recycler.

The plastic containers would need to have the uncontaminated liquid extracted, whilst washing the containers and packaging them for collection by the recycler.

Their current production needed to continue while this process was in action.

Solution

Waste Initiatives supplied a system that would shred the full containers and release the milk draining it through a strainer into a stainless steel receival tank below, to then be pumped out for transport.

The shredded containers were conveyed via a screw auger fitted with internal water jets with sufficient flow to wash the shredded plastic but not dilute the milk unduly.

These washings also drained into the stainless- steel tank below. The shredded plastic exiting the screw conveyor was baled in a WastePac twin chamber baler so that production could continue while full bales were being tied off.