Glass recycling facility planned

INTERNATIONAL building materials supplier Knauf Insulation is planning to operate a glass recycling facility in Townsville to produce crushed glass for use in insulation.

BM Webb Industrial Property has applied to Townsville City Council for the planning approvals to develop the facility in the BM Webb industrial estate.

A purpose-built facility is planned for 1.16ha of vacant land at 164 Webb Dr, Mount St John.

The project involves a warehouse comprising 1950sq m of gross floor area and ancillary office of 200sq m forward of the warehouse, fronting Webb Dr.

The proposed facility is designed to process of 10 tonnes of glass per hour.

BM Webb property manager Jeff Turner said the application was one of a number of planned developments which should provide a lot of building activity in the estate in the next year.

The development requires a Material Change of Use from medium to heavy impact industry zoning and the application is currently on public notification.

According to the application, glass bottles will be sourced from the Containers for Change Scheme with the bottles crushed into a glass cullet product.

The bottles will be trucked to the facility and stored in a bunker in the warehouse.

Glass will be processed via crusher/breaker units to produce the cullet.

Any ferrous or aluminium material will be removed via an overhead magnet and eddy current process. Paper labelling is to be separated by barrel dryer and dust will be collected via two cyclone units at the barrel dryer and a trommel.

The glass cullet will be bagged into one-tonne bags and loaded into shipping containers for export.