Recycleye has installed and commissioned a QuantiSort 2.0 AI fibre sorting unit at NEWS Recycling in Norwich, part of the Norse Group, in a single weekend. The unit sits at the end of the line, recovering paper and card from the residue stream, and is delivering 97% output purity on the recovered fibre.
It is the first in our new series of QuantiSort success stories from live installations across Europe, and it shows how quickly an AI sorting unit can go from delivery to production without a line shutdown.
The challenge: fibre lost to residue at the end of the line
Every materials recovery facility loses some good material to residue. On a fibre line, that means saleable paper and card leaving the plant as waste, with the disposal cost that goes with it.
NEWS Recycling (Norse Environmental Waste Services) runs the materials recovery facility at Costessey, on the edge of Norwich, sorting kerbside recycling for the seven councils of the Norfolk Waste Partnership. The team wanted to clean up the residue stream at the end of its line without adding manual sorting or stopping production to rebuild the line. The unit had to fit into the existing layout, run with the existing conveyors and be commissioned fast.
The solution: AI vision that ejects everything that isn’t fibre
QuantiSort 2.0 is Recycleye’s AI-powered air-jet sorter. A computer vision unit mounted over the belt identifies every item passing beneath it in real time, classifying fibre, plastics, metals and residue. Downstream, a bank of air jets fires on anything that isn’t fibre and ejects it. The paper and card pass straight through to the recovered product.
At NEWS Recycling the unit is working as a fibre clean-up stage on the residue line, so material that would previously have been lost is now going back into the product. Output purity on the recovered fibre is 97%.
Three things make the difference on a line like this:
- Item-level detection. The AI sees each object, not just colour or density, so it can separate fibre from film, flexibles and small residue that optical sorters struggle with.
- Targeted ejection. Firing at the contaminants rather than the fibre keeps air consumption down and avoids blowing good material into the reject stream.
- Remote monitoring. The plant and Recycleye’s team can watch four live camera feeds of the infeed, both eject points and the outfeed, and check performance without being on the platform.
Installed and commissioned in one weekend
The whole job, from the unit arriving on site to running in production, was done over a single weekend. The Recycleye engineering team fitted the vision unit and air-jet ejector onto the existing conveyor, connected the QuantiSort 2.0 control cabinet, calibrated the system and commissioned it, all within the weekend.
For the plant that meant no extended shutdown, no changes to the surrounding line and no lost production days. The unit was sorting live material from day one.
Why AI fibre sorting matters for UK MRFs now
Recovering fibre from residue pays twice: more tonnage sold as paper and card, and less tonnage paid for as waste. With Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging putting a sharper focus on what UK facilities actually recover, a clean fibre output is becoming a commercial requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
QuantiSort 2.0 is designed to be added to an existing line rather than built into a new one. That is what made the Norwich install possible in a weekend, and it is the same approach Recycleye is now taking to installations across the UK and Europe.
If you are considering AI sorting for a fibre or residue line, the questions worth asking a supplier are: what is the output purity on real material, how long does the install take, and can the plant see what the unit is doing once it is running. NEWS Recycling now has answers to all three.
See what QuantiSort could recover from your line
This is part one of our QuantiSort success stories series. Over the coming months we’ll be sharing more installations from live sites across Europe, with the real numbers behind each one.
Want to know what QuantiSort 2.0 could recover from your residue line? Get in touch with the Recycleye team to arrange a material trial or a site visit.