Italian waste management company Masotina has partnered with ZenRobotics to retrofit their plastics sorting facility (PRF) with an AI-powered robotic sorting station for the recovery of clear PET at a high purity rate, announced ZenRobotics. The Masotina S.p.A. plant in Milan, Italy, is a household waste plastic recovery and sorting facility with a total capacity of 355.000 tons per year. Masotina’s S.p.A. facility is one of the largest material recovery facilities (MRF) in Europe that receives, sorts, separates and prepares recyclable household waste plastics.

The company has made substantial investments in recent years into advanced automation and recycling technologies to gain a leadership position in the plastic waste recovery and recycling market. By partnering with ZenRobotics, Masotina expands its technology capabilities to include AI-based waste sorting robotics at its flagship facility. The facility has been retrofitted in recent years to feature automated sorting and selection lines that make use of the highest recycling technology to separate out recyclable waste plastics through a combination of optical, mechanical and manual sorting.

One of the latest additions is the ZenRobotics Fast Picker sorting station that performs quality control at the facility, improving efficiency and reducing the need for manual sorting. The job of the Fast Picker is to ensure high output purity for clear PET by removing contaminants and taking out other valuable recyclable polymers such as HDPE that are returned to the recycling loop. Due to its compact size, the ZenRobotics Fast Picker has been integrated into the existing sorting line despite very tight spaces at the facility, as per the statement.

“ZenRobotics is excited to partner with Masotina, one of Italy’s strongest waste management companies. We were pleased to see that our robotics technology matches the rigorous sorting ambitions of Masotina. We strongly believe that smart robotics has enormous potential to recover more and more recyclable materials. The Masotina S.p.A facility is a perfect example of how existing MRFs can make use of the latest technology to improve their efficiency and economics in waste sorting,” said ZenRobotics CEO Jarmo Ruohonen.