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Operator profile: Moreton Bay Recycling

Earthmovers & Excavators magazine visited Moreton Bay Recycling’s new facility at Narangba in Brisbane’s northern suburbs and were impressed by the setup, especially considering it only started operating on the site at the start of this year

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Earthmovers & Excavators magazine met with Moreton Bay Recycling business manager Hilary Dold, who says the journey from being solely a contractor to now focusing primarily on concrete recycling and supplying others with aggregate has been an interesting one. It still operates as a contractor too, but on a much reduced scale compared to years gone by.

Considerable investment and earthworks were required before the team were able to start operating on the new site at the start of this year, but with the trucks now flowing in and out and demand for the product increasing, it’s all been worth it for the Moreton Bay Recycling team.

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CRUSHING CAPACITY

Up until four months ago the organisation could not accept any concrete waste that had footings, precast or pipes embedded in it because it had too much steel in it to be processed – at least in its raw form. But since purchasing and attaching a Turkish-made Inan Makina PLV30 pulveriser/rock breaker to its Kobelco excavator, Moreton Bay Recycling now has the ability to break it down.

This has allowed it to take a much wider range of concrete waste material, which can be dropped off free of charge. Contractors who use Moreton Bay Recycling are saving money and diverting their waste from landfill. It is the only place you can take waste concrete and drop it off free of charge in the Brisbane area and it’s fair to say the word is spreading!

The concrete that gets delivered is processed into seven different types of aggregate; products which are in always in high demand and used for everything from laying new pathways in public parks to landscaped outdoor areas and much more.

“When we have enough concrete coming in we stockpile this ‘Agicrete’ – that is absolutely clean, there is no steel in it at all. We accept demolition concrete which is stockpiled and we use this for all our products, except the CBR80, which we make from agitator concrete [leftovers from concrete pours],” Dold explains.

“We supplied over 1,000 tonnes of this to a contractor for a subdivision job earlier this year.”

Other aggregate types produced onsite include recycled aggregate in a range of different sizes, second grade scalp, profilings, drainage recycled concrete, compactable fill material, processed asphalt and crusher dust.

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Demand for these products is in a constant state of flux, so the business aims to have a wide variety in fairly large quantities on hand at all times.

“Our staff have all come from a civil construction background, they are all [excavator] operators,” Dold says.

“They’ve just learnt so much and I’m really proud of them. The setup that we have now it’s really impressive and is working very well.

“We have had a fair bit of assistance from [crusher and screener supplier] Lincom, but our staff have really put in the hard yards in terms of trying different configurations and setting up the chain of machines in different orders to see what works best for our purposes, and really refined the whole process.

“We are very appreciative to the whole team at Lincom; they are just up the road and have been a great help to us this year and we are really happy with these machines.

“We are now able to produce all these different kinds of products simultaneously, without moving things around too much.”

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IDEAL LOCATION

Crushing concrete is especially hard on machinery, so having the support of Lincom and keeping up regular maintenance is essential to keep the operation running smoothly.

The location of the new facility is ideal and is close enough to the Sunshine Coast to be utilised by contactors both to the north of Brisbane and south of the Sunshine Coast.

“There are six major concrete plants within a kilometre of where we are, so we get all their leftovers, which is coming in consistently,” Dold explains.

Nothing goes to waste at Moreton Bay Recycling; it manages to find a use for just about everything that comes into the yard.

It’s worth noting that the new Queensland waste levy, which came into effect in July this year and set the increased fee of $75/tonne on general waste in landfill for commercial operators.

A recent government report showed that Queensland’s waste dumping is outstripping population growth. And so, the government has set a target to increase the amount of recycled, reused, or repaired household rubbish from 31 per cent today down to 80 per cent by 2030.

The suggested solution in Queensland’s Draft Resource Recovery Industries 10-Year Roadmap and Action Plan is a more circular economy. That means more investment in technology and businesses that recover resources, especially in the construction and demolition industries.

Dold says this is a step in the right direction and an added incentive for contractors to dispose of their concrete waste in a responsible and cost effective way and discourage landfill disposal and that Moreton Bay Recycling is proud to be at the forefront of this movement towards sustainability.

 

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