Countrystyle Recycling has invested £1.4 million in new equipment and infrastructure for recycling ragger rope, a waste stream arising from the paper recycling process at the DS Smith plant at Kemsley Mill, Sittingbourne, Kent.

Countrystyle is now one of only a handful of companies capable of recycling and reusing the old ropes, diverting c 12,500 tonnes per year from landfill and conserving the recovered resources for use in the mill. Ragger rope is used in the paper recycling process to shred and pull out contaminates from the paper stream. A ragger rope weighs between 20-30 tonnes and has to be replaced fairly regularly, previously being taken to landfill for disposal.

Investment in the new state-of-the-art shredder and screener for the DS Smith Kent facility, will allow the ropes to be cut down into smaller sections by the shredder. Ferrous metals are recovered via an over-band magnet. The remaining fractions will be screened to separate fibre from plastics with the reclaimed fibre being reused in the mill to create new paper and the resultant plastic stream being used for energy recovery to power the mill.