Equipment Report

Photo courtesy of Amp Robotics

Amp Robotics raises $91M in funding

Amp Robotics Corp., Louisville, Colorado, has raised $91 million in corporate equity in a Series C financing led by Congruent Ventures and Wellington Management as well as new and existing investors, including Blue Earth Capital, XN and Valor Equity Partners. This round of funding follows a $55 million Series B financing led by XN in 2021.

“Advancements in robotics and automation are accelerating the transformation of traditional infrastructure, and Amp is seeking to reshape the waste and recycling industries,” says Michael DeLucia, sector lead for climate investing at Wellington Management. “By bringing digital intelligence to the recycling industry, Amp can sort waste streams and extract additional value beyond what is otherwise possible.”

According to Amp, the company will use the latest funding to scale its business operations while continuing its international expansion, adding that demand for robotics to retrofit existing recycling infrastructure continues to grow in demand for recycled commodities of all types.

The company says the new capital will enhance manufacturing capacity to support a fleet of about 275 robots around the world and further Amp’s ongoing development of artificial intelligence- (AI-) enabled automation applications for recycling, such as Amp Vortex. Amp also has three secondary sorting facilities in the Denver, Atlanta and Cleveland metropolitan areas; the funding will help drive further growth of the company’s secondary sorting business in the United States.   

“Our focus from the outset has been our application of AI-powered automation to economically and sustainably improve our global recycling system,” Amp Robotics founder and CEO Matanya Horowitz says. “We’ve been fortunate to attract a passionate team, loyal customers and visionary investors along the way. With this new funding, we’ll accelerate our efforts to modernize and expand our recycling infrastructure, aiding society’s path to a circular economy.”

“Amp’s technology is rewriting the economics of recycling, marrying purpose with profit for our recycling partners,” Congruent Ventures co-founder and managing partner Abe Yokell says. “It is a privilege to support such a mission-driven team as they have grown from an eight-person operation to an industry leader.”

Amp’s proprietary technology applies computer vision and deep learning to identify and recover plastics, cardboard, paper, cans, cartons and many other containers and packaging types reclaimed for raw material processing. The company says its AI platform, Amp Neuron, has recognized more than 50 billion objects in real-world conditions, making it the largest known dataset of recyclable materials for machine learning.

Data is key to improving recycling and recovery rates for a circular economy. As part of the National Recycling Strategy released in 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited measurement standardization and increased data collection as one of its five objectives. Amp says it continues to break new ground in the application of data for recycling with its material characterization software, which digitizes the real-time flow of recyclables with precision and consistency. Better data provide opportunities to identify gaps in material capture, transparency on what recyclables are and are not recycled and a basis for standardized measurement vital to improving the national recycling system.

The company says the strength of its AI also makes secondary sorting technically and economically feasible. Through its secondary sorting model, Amp recovers mixed paper, metals and a portfolio of Nos. 1-7 plastics in various form factors and attributes with high precision and purity, with a special focus on plastic blends uniquely enabled by AI. The company resells these commodities, including bespoke chemical and polymer blends needed by processors and manufacturers, to end-market buyers.

In 2022, Amp expanded its leadership team with key hires to lead engineering, finance and people.  Amp also recently expanded its partnership with Waste Connections, its largest customer. Since late 2020, Waste Connections has booked or deployed 50 of Amp’s high-speed robotics systems on plastic, fiber and residue lines, becoming the largest operator of AI-guided robotics in the industry. 

Vecoplan AG introduces new cleaning process for plastics recycling

Photos courtesy of Vecoplan AG

Vecoplan AG, a Germany-based supplier of machinery and equipment for processing primary and secondary raw materials for thermal and material recycling, has introduced an additional step in plastics processing that it says demonstrates new ways to save water and energy—a departure from established treatment processes.

Vecoplan says it has installed a demonstration and test facility called the Cleanikum at its new technology center in Neunkhausen, Germany, which covers around 6,458 square feet and will allow customers to work with company experts to run cleaning tests with film material and thin-walled hard plastics made from polyolefins such as low- density polyethylene, high-density polyethylene and polypropylene. Vecoplan says the facility features a new combination of machines for cleaning plastic and processes it to yield high-quality extrudable flakes that can be used in the manufacture of consumer goods, packaging and cosmetics.

“Our approach is purposely different from conventional solutions,” says Martina Schmidt, head of the Recycling and Waste Division at Vecoplan. “Our developers have optimized the processing method to provide better cleaning quality while reducing energy and water consumption.”

According to Vecoplan, the Cleanikum demonstrates the systematic use of cleaning and separation technologies that help to cut back on the use of energy and water. Postconsumer material can be cleaned in a cold or hot process and with or without lye—depending on the degree of contamination and the quality requirements for the recyclate. The company says the new facility can handle polyolefins in the form of plastic film or used bottles.

“We rely on mechanical dry precleaning, which means there is no conventional prewash,” Schmidt says. “This lowers our use of fresh water, and we can significantly reduce the quantity of wastewater. The facility thus demonstrates processes that are economical in the use of water, an important resource.”

Vecoplan says the required degree of cleanliness can be customized according to the user’s requirements. In addition to wet or dry mechanical cleaning, the Cleanikum can demonstrate temperature-controlled intensive heating using a sodium hydroxide solution that works to dissolve greasy and oily impurities and remove adhesives from labels.

In postshredding, a wet granulator shreds the cleaned plastic film to the particle size required for drying and extruding. A combined friction separator and dewatering screw then dries the material mechanically to a residual moisture of 5 percent to 6 percent. Vecoplan says the use of mechanical instead of thermal drying demonstrates how it is possible to improve the environmental footprint of plastics recycling.

After dry and wet cleaning, Vecoplan says thin-walled hard plastics are sent directly to a turbo dryer, which can reduce the residual moisture to only 2 percent. The processed plastic flakes are then ready for subsequent sorting or extruding.

Pellenc ST opens North Carolina test center

Photos courtesy of Pellenc ST

Pellenc ST, a France-based producer of sorting machinery for the recycling industry, has opened a new test center in Pineville, North Carolina, it says will help meet demands of industrial testing. The company held an inauguration for the facility Nov. 10.

According to Pellenc, the new 6,000-square-foot industrial demonstrator site includes its latest intelligent sorting equipment. Two of the company’s machines are available to study the best sorting strategies and ensure the quality of the sorted flows. Through a partnership with Uzwil, Switzerland-based Buhler Group, Buhler’s Sortex A GlowVision optical sorter also will be available to help customers carry out tests on plastic flakes.

Harry White, head of Pellenc ST’s American subsidiary, says, “This building is also made available to packaging producers to validate the ‘sortability’ of materials in the real-life conditions of a sorting center. We support manufacturers in the development of test protocols while providing diagnostics and recommendations for improvement.”

Pellenc ST says it has 2,000 machines installed in more than 40 countries and is planning to increase its global presence in the coming years.

Its President Jean Henin says the opening of the U.S. test center will be followed by the relocation and upgrading of its test center in Japan, as well as the opening of two new facilities in Australia and the U.K. by 2024.

“The aim is to increase proximity to our clients and enable them to benefit from our latest technologies directly on their territory,” Henin says.