MATIQ adds TOMRA sorters and analysers at Sheffield MRF
Sheffield recycler MATIQ Group Ltd has completed an upgrade of its Garter Street materials recovery facility (MRF), fitting 14 TOMRA AUTOSORT units, 14 PolyPerception-powered waste analysers and TOMRA digital tools. The plant can process up to 250,000 metric tons a year.
The work was finished in September 2026, when three AUTOSORT units were added to the existing line and the analysers were installed. The plant was commissioned in early 2025 and has run on AUTOSORT technology since then.
About the business and the site
MATIQ was formerly Direct Special Metals and rebranded in June 2026. It operates sites in Sheffield, Gateshead and Grimsby, handling municipal and commercial and industrial material. It aims to reach one million tons a year of UK processing capacity by 2029.
Garter Street is the company's headquarters. It sorts mixed dry recyclables from kerbside and commercial collections across the North of England and Midlands into ten target fractions, including fibres, plastics and metals. These are sold to reprocessors in the UK and abroad. Material that cannot be recycled is turned into refuse-derived fuel (RDF) and solid recovered fuel (SRF).
Moving beyond manual sampling
Until now, quality was checked by periodic manual sampling. The composition of material between samples was largely unknown, and problems with incoming loads were often found only after processing.
The analysers sit at key points along the line, covering incoming material and sorted output. They use cameras to classify material on the conveyors in real time, showing composition, recovery rates and losses. A new AI platform from PolyPerception, in which TOMRA holds a 51% stake, lets operators query plant data in conversational language and search for items such as batteries and vapes.
- TOMRA Local Control lets operators see status, alarms and trends for every sorter, updated every second, and change settings or sorting programmes from the control room.
- TOMRA Insight, a cloud-based platform, provides dashboards and reports, and gives TOMRA engineers remote access to machine data so maintenance can be planned before a fault causes downtime.
- MATIQ also has a TOMRA service package in place.
Regulatory and customer pressure
UK MRF operators face tighter quality demands from customers and regulators, with contamination thresholds tightening across every fraction MATIQ produces. Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility and England's Simpler Recycling reforms are also changing the make-up of material arriving at MRFs.
The analyser data feeds waste intelligence reports that automate sampling and produce audit-ready evidence of output quality. This supports updated 2024 government guidance on sampling at materials facilities in England, enforced by the Environment Agency. The guidance allows AI-based visual detection, provided operators can show their method gives representative results. Municipal customers receive a breakdown of their material and its recovery, which can be used to check contract targets.
Chief executive Anthony Holley said: "Customers need compositional evidence rather than assurances." He added that as an independent SME competing with much larger integrated groups, MATIQ cannot win on tonnage alone, and sees accuracy, yield and data as its points of difference.
Gavin Russell, area sales manager UK at TOMRA Recycling, said sorting is no longer about material identification alone but about transparency and control across the whole process.
Source: Interplas Insights · Image: Pixabay