Sonoco opens South Carolina recycling plant.

Sonoco, headquartered in Hartsville, S.C., has started commercial operation of a fully automated materials recovery facility (MRF) that will process dual-stream residential and commercial recyclable materials from the Raleigh and Wake County, N.C., area.

The 45,000-square-foot MRF operates under Sonoco's wholly owned subsidiary Paper Stock Dealers Inc. The facility's computer-automated reclamation processing system uses customized conveyors, an elliptical sorter, large storage hoppers and a fully automated horizontal baler to automatically separate, store, compact and bale reclaimed newsprint, old corrugated containers and other recycled paper and packaging, aluminum, steel, glass and plastic.

"Sonoco has invested nearly $5 million in developing a fully automated materials recycling facility that the Raleigh area can be proud of," Myles Cohen, vice president and GM of Sonoco's Recovered Paper Division, says. "We have been operating Raleigh's MRF for the past 10 years and the company was recently awarded a new contract to continue reclaiming the community's curbside recyclables. This new facility is replacing two older, less sophisticated facilities that were unable to meet the growing residential and commercial reclamation needs of the Raleigh and Wake County area," Cohen adds.

"Our new facility is already improving the efficiency and productivity of Raleigh's curbside recycling program by significantly reducing the time it takes to off-load, process and move recycled materials in and out of the facility," Marilyn Quattlebaum, director of operations for Sonoco's Recovered Paper Division, says.

Quattlebaum says the MRF has the capacity to process 500 million tons of residential and commercial recyclables annually. She adds that the system will accommodate the commercial and municipal reclamation needs of communities in a 150-square-mile radius.