Since 1930, LELY ENVIRONNEMENT, a French family-owned company, has been offering its services for the collection, transport, processing, recovery and recycling of waste from industrial waste (C&I). Based in the Isère department in south-east France, the company has two main facilities for the recovery of wood waste collected from companies, local authorities and building industry professionals: its Inoval’Y sorting centre, and the Ecopôle, which has, among its many recovery platforms, one entirely dedicated to sorting wood by grade.
A Sorting Centre Capable of Recovering Mixed Wood
Built by the plant supplier Aktid, this facility was created to meet the growing need to recover materials and aims to reduce the tonnages sent to landfill by 25,000 tonnes per year in 2024 and 2025. Each year, Inoval’Y processes around 60,000 tonnes of waste, 20% of which is wood. To recover this fraction, LELY ENVIRONNEMENT decided to automate one of its lines and put its trust in Pellenc ST for the supply of a state-of-the-art sorting machine. This line was therefore fitted with a Mistral+ CONNECT optical sorter. Equipped with an infrared spectrometer, its role is to recover the wood present in the incoming stream of waste from the industrial and construction industry. After a single pass through the optical sorter, a mixed wood fraction with a purity of around 95% is obtained.
An Ecopole to Recover Grade A and Grade B Wood
A recovery platform entirely dedicated to wood has been created at the Ecopôle. Here, LELY ENVIRONNEMENT processes both streams from its Inoval’y sorting centre and those already sorted and collected directly from its customers. Designed by Ermac, this sorting line processes 20,000 tonnes of wood every year, and goes one step further with respect to separation, differentiating wood according to its quality.
To do this, another Mistral+ CONNECT is also at work. It combines infrared and visible spectrometry to purify natural wood referred to as “Grade A” wood, which has greater added value. Equipped with a high-resolution ejection bar, it is also able to recover small fractions that cannot be recovered by manual sorters at the end of the line. With a purity of around 85%, this line can recover up to 70% of natural wood.
This grade A wood then undergoes pre-shredding followed by rapid shredding to obtain small-grain size wood (<100mm). Metal debris is then removed from the resulting product, and its fines (<5mm) and non-ferrous elements removed. The result is a finished product which is then dried and analysed to meet customer requirements. This is known as SSD* fuel, which is used to supply heating plants in the Grenoble area.Grade B wood, mainly furniture wood, which is treated, painted, or varnished, is not left without an outlet. Most of it is sent to Italy for recycling, giving it a second life as particle board.
By choosing innovation, LELY ENVIRONNEMENT is now one of the most advanced C&I recovery plants in France, recovering over 10,000 tonnes of wood every year. Mickael Lely, manager of the sorting centre, further explains, “We’ve been using Pellenc ST machines for more than 5 years now and we’re satisfied with their performance and ease of use. Thanks to the modularity of the machines and the expert advice we get from the technicians, we can adapt our sorting recipes and develop them according to the needs of our end customers”. This is only the first step, as new investments are on the agenda to continue automating the plant, recovering new materials, and participating in the circular economy loop.
