STENA NORDIC RECYCLING CENTER IMPRESSED THE GUESTS
This year’s Sphere Forum was held at the Stena Nordic Recycling Center in Halmstad – one of the world’s premier recycling facilities. Since the acquisition of the property five years ago, the buildings have been filled with advanced technology that takes recycling to a new level. Today, the Stena Nordic Recycling Center is a game changer in recycling.
”I really think it’s worthwhile to come to the facility in Halmstad and to really experience and see everything happening here. When taking a tour here, you both see and understand how we’re part of a broader context – and that Stena actually stand for the solution to some of the challenges the world faces today,” says Eva Hansdotter, HR Director Stena AB and one of the participants at Sphere Forum.
She and the over 200 other guests received an encompassing walkthrough of the entire plant, that within a short time has become a recycling hub for the Nordic industry. Assembled here is cutting-edge technology for recycling materials from complex products, such as cars and other vehicles, phones, computers and other electronics.
New processes are continuously installed to comply with industry developments and customer demands for higher recovery rates. One of the latest additions is a facility for recycling the flexible plastics that, for example, to a large extent is used as packaging materials by the industry.
The recycling of plastics impressed many guests, including Niclas Mårtensson, CEO Stena Line, who could put some pellets of recycled plastics in his pocket.
”It’s the first time I’m here and I’m very proud of what I’ve seen. Not least concerning the recycling of plastics. For us in the shipping industry, the amount of plastics in the oceans is a very important issue. Here we have a concrete example of how we at Stena work to take care of plastics and re-cycle it. So we can have clean seas on which to sail our environmentally-friendly vessels.”
In parallel with world-leading recycling, the Stena Nordic Recycling Center will also be used as a knowledge center and testbed for new recycling technology and development of new products – under the name Stena Recycling Lab.
”Here we offer a physical testbed and collaboration workspace for entrepreneurs, researchers and students. The vision is to act as a catalyst for innovation and development in order to achieve shorter innovation cycles for new technology and new products and services within recycling,” says Mats Torring, Head of New Ventures, Stena Metall Group.
The guests also got to experience the newly built exhibition that explains the processes and what actually makes the Stena Nordic Recycling Center a world leading recycling facility.
Kristofer Sundsgård, CEO, Stena Recycling AB explains what it’s all about:
”We surround us with many complex products that consist of many different materials. Advanced technology is required to recycle them. That’s the challenge we solve here. Building this facility, we utilised our size and developed new innovations that take recycling to the next level. That’s what makes the Stena Nordic Recycling Center a game changer,” he says.
