Bristol is home to waste recycling specialists McCarthy Marland. Located close to the city centre, the company handles in excess of 60,000 tonnes of general waste per year.
Despite the tight confines of the company’s site, currently being extended to the boundary, the throughput of material is very impressive with an almost constant flow of their own skip and grab wagons along with council and outside vehicles entering and leaving the site.
To handle the waste material, McCarthy Marland have invested in a fleet of Hyundai excavators, ranging from 8 – 15t for sorting and loading duties. This latest investment adds more Hyundai machines to their fleet which already included several HX145LCR’s and a HX220L 20t class excavator.
The latest excavators to join the ten-strong fleet are three new Hyundai HX145LCR’s that have been sourced locally through Hyundai dealer, Molson Equipment, a company already known to McCarthy Marland. Operations Manager for the site; Martin Williams said, “We have been using a slow-speed shredder and trommel supplied by Molson Green for a while and have found their back up and service to be excellent. They’re only down the road and nothing is an issue for them if we have a problem.”
These larger machines are used around the site on a variety of duties from sorting incoming waste to loading outgoing materials. Two machines have been fitted with a fixed leg 5-tine grab from Geith whilst the third HX145 is fitted with a Kinshofer rotating selector grab. “The two different grabs are ideal for different applications but can crossover.” Martin explains “The fixed leg version is ideal for bulk moving and loading of a variety of materials whilst the rotating grab is ideally used for picking and cleaning the incoming material as it is tipped.”
A fourth Hyundai, the R80CR-9A is almost constantly located up on the large pile of material in the shed and is used for loading the in-feed hopper to the 6-man picking station with material.
Whilst waste material plays a huge role in the productivity of the plant, construction and demolition waste is also handled here in smaller amounts with a high-quality topsoil being a very popular end product.
“The excavators on the site are fully maintained by the service team at Molson. “They are very good with the service regime.” Martin comments “They’ll let us know when the machines are in need of service and let us know in plenty of time so that we can adjust for the down time.
We staggered delivery of the machines which means only one machine will be needing service at any one time which won’t leave us too short.” Due to the hours accrued on the excavators, McCarthy Marland operates a strict three-year replacement schedule on them as older machines from another manufacturer had caused expensive and problematic downtime in the past. “So far, I’m very pleased with both the performance of the machines and from the dealer.” Martin comments “If they carry on this way, which I’m sure they will, it will be an easy choice to return to Hyundai when the time comes.”
