Recycling operations run on throughput, purity, and reliability. Whether you’re processing plastic granulate, mixed dry recyclables, paper, glass cullet, or shredded metals, the material‑handling equipment between key process stages directly affects both recovery quality and operating cost. Spiral Elevator Limited manufactures vibratory handling systems that elevate, screen, feed, and sort recyclable materials continuously, in a compact footprint, without the belts, chains, and nip points that slow your line down and inflate your maintenance spend. Built in the UK for demanding industrial environments, our equipment keeps material moving cleanly between stages, without cross‑contamination, blockages, or unnecessary transfers.
Challenges We Solve for Recycling & Waste Management Operators
Screening mixed recyclables by size fraction:
Mixed streams arriving at an MRF or processing line contain a wide range of particle sizes that need separating before downstream equipment can work efficiently. Sending unsized material into optical sorters, balers, or granulators causes blockages, accelerates wear, and reduces recovery quality. Our vibratory screens classify material into defined size fractions continuously, handling cardboard fines, plastic flake, glass cullet, and mixed granulates at high throughput without manual intervention.
Elevating plastic flake and granulate post-washing:
Washed plastic granulate exits washing lines wet, dense, and at floor level and needs to reach dryers, silos, or bagging stations above. Belt conveyors and bucket elevators are difficult to clean fully and introduce contamination risk. Our spiral elevators vertically convey granulate in a continuous helical path with dwell time built in. This allows surface moisture to dissipate during elevation, reducing the load on downstream drying stages and keeping your plant layout compact.
Controlling feed rates into sorting and separation equipment:
Irregular surge feeding from hoppers and tipping floors overwhelms optical sorters and magnetic separators, creating gaps and peaks that reduce separation accuracy and recovery rates. Our vibrating feeders meter material out of bunkers and transfer hoppers at a steady, controlled rate. This gives downstream equipment a consistent, manageable burden, improving sort quality and reducing the need for manual intervention.
Handling abrasive and irregular materials without excessive wear:
Glass cullet, shredded metals, and aggregate fractions from construction and demolition waste are hard on conventional conveying equipment. Belts tear, bearings seize, and maintenance cycles pile up. Our equipment uses robust, mild, and abrasion-resistant steel construction with no belts or chains in the product path. Fewer wearing parts means longer intervals between maintenance and lower total cost of operation across a typical recycling campaign.
Removing fines and contaminants from recyclable streams:
Fines such as soil, glass dust, film fragments, and paper fibre reduce the value of recovered materials and clog downstream equipment. Removing them requires a reliable separation step that doesn’t interrupt continuous flow. Our screening spiral elevator integrates size classification directly into the vertical conveying path, removing out-of-specification fines during elevation without a separate sieving station or additional floor space.
Cooling hot extrudate and granulate before bagging or storage:
Recycled plastic exiting granulators or compounders can reach temperatures of 60 to 90°C. Bagging or storing material at this temperature causes clumping, deformation, and rejected loads. Our cooling spiral elevators channel airflow along the helical flight during elevation, reducing material temperatures significantly before the product reaches your packaging or silo filling station. No separate cooling conveyor is required.
Managing dusty and lightweight materials:
Film, paper fiber, and fine plastic fractions generate significant airborne dust during transfer. Open conveying increases housekeeping burden, creates fire risk with certain materials, and reduces air quality in the facility. Our enclosed tube feeders and covered spiral designs contain material during transfer, reducing dust generation at the transfer point and protecting both equipment and operators.
Space-efficient vertical transfer in congested plant layouts:
Recycling facilities are rarely designed with headroom and floor space to spare. Adding inclined conveyors or bucket elevators to connect processing stages eats into the floor space you need for primary sorting and baling equipment. Our spiral elevators rise up to 12 metres in a footprint as small as 1.8m², giving you the vertical transfer you need without surrendering the floor area your operation depends on.
Our Equipment Range
Key Products for Recycling & Waste Management
Screening Spiral Elevator: Running a separate elevator and a separate sieve means two machines, two footprints, and two transfer points where things can go wrong. Our screening spiral elevator handles both in one enclosed pass, pulling out fines and oversized fragments mid-elevation so only in-specification material reaches your baler or packaging line.
Air Cooling Spiral Elevator: Hot granulate straight off an extruder cannot go straight into a bag or silo - it clumps, deforms, and creates problems further down the line. Our air-cooling spiral elevator moves material vertically and brings the temperature down in the same pass, so it arrives at your packaging station stable and ready without needing a separate floor-level cooler.
Cooling or Dry Spiral Elevator: Washed plastic flake carries more surface moisture than it looks like it does, and that causes real problems in mills and downstream equipment. Our cooling or dry spiral elevator gives material the airflow and dwell time it needs during elevation, so it arrives at the next stage dry and free-flowing rather than clumped and sticky.
Vibrating Screens & Sieves: Glass cullet carries fines, plastic flake comes in mixed sizes, and mixed dry recyclables need separating before anything downstream can work properly. Our vibrating screens and sieves give you a clean, repeatable size separation at the throughput your line actually runs at, with multi-deck configurations available if you need more than one cut point in a single pass.
Vibrating Feeders: A tipping floor or bunker does not deliver material in a neat stream—it dumps, surges, and gaps, and every sorter and separator on your line suffers for it. Our vibrating feeders sit between your infeed and your processing equipment, turning that irregular flow into a steady, controlled stream that your downstream equipment can actually work with.
Decline Spiral Elevator: Getting material down between floors without a free-fall drop is straightforward until you are dealing with brittle plastic fractions or glass cullet that shatters on impact. Our decline spiral elevator brings material down in a controlled, continuous path with no drops, no damage, and the option to build in accumulation or cooling along the way.
How We Integrate Into Your Process
Tipping Floor to Primary Screening:
Vibrating feeders regulate material from the tipping floor or infeed hopper onto primary screens, controlling surge loads and giving your screening deck a consistent, manageable feed.
Size Classification and Fines Removal:
Vibratory screens sort material into fractions. Oversized items go to manual or optical sort, mid-fraction to the recovery stream, and fines to landfill diversion. Multi-deck configurations handle multiple cut points in one pass.
Elevation to Dryers and Silos:
After washing or granulation, spiral elevators transfer plastic flake and granulate vertically. Dwell time during elevation allows surface moisture to dissipate, reducing downstream drying energy.
Post-Granulator Cooling:
Cooling spiral elevators bring hot recyclate from extruders and granulators down to a stable temperature during vertical transfer, removing the need for floor-level cooling conveyors before bagging.
Distribution to Magnetic Separators:
Vibrating feeders spread material evenly across the width of magnetic and eddy-current separators, improving ferrous and non-ferrous recovery rates by eliminating uneven burden depth.
Inter-Floor Transfer:
Where processing levels span multiple floors with dryers above and balers below, decline and elevation spirals handle the transfer gently, without free-fall drops that break apart fragile recovered materials.
Container and Bale Preparation:
Compaction tables settle recovered material into IBCs and drums during filling, improving fill weight consistency and reducing air voids before dispatch.
Multi-function units combining elevation, cooling, and screening reduce equipment interfaces across your line and cut the number of transfer points where contamination or material loss can occur.
Why Recycling Operators Choose Spiral Elevator Limited
Built for your material and your line:
Recycled materials are inconsistent by nature. Particle size, moisture content, bulk density, and contamination levels vary from load to load. There is no off-the-shelf machine that handles all of that reliably. Every system we build is designed around your specific material stream, your throughput requirements, and your plant layout. If it doesn't perform in your conditions, we haven't done our job.
Robust construction for demanding environments:
Recycling environments are tough with abrasive materials, wet conditions, heavy throughput, and continuous operation. Our equipment is built in mild steel, stainless steel, or abrasion-resistant steel, depending on your application, with no belts or chains in the product path. Fewer wearing parts mean longer service intervals and lower total cost of ownership across your operating year.
Fewer machines, fewer interfaces, less downtime:
Every additional machine in a recycling line is another motor to maintain, another transfer point where material can spill or contaminate, and another piece of equipment to source parts for. Our multi-function spiral elevators combine elevation, cooling, and screening in a single unit, reducing your equipment count, your maintenance schedule, and the number of transfer points between process stages.
Throughput you can rely on:
A recycling line that stops directly costs you in tipping fees, storage, and missed contracts. Our vibratory systems are engineered for continuous operation with simple drive arrangements and accessible components. Consistent material presentation and burden depth can help downstream optical sorting systems maintain peak operating efficiency, with well-fed systems commonly achieving recovery performance in the 85-95% range depending on material stream and application.
UK-built, locally supported:
Every system is engineered and manufactured in the UK by Spiral Elevator Limited, with lead times of 6 to 12 weeks from design sign-off. When you need commissioning support, a technical answer, or a site visit, you are speaking directly with the engineers who designed and built your equipment, not a third-party distributor.
Experience in demanding industrial environments:
Recycling lines, abrasive materials, high throughput, continuous operation. This is the kind of environment our equipment is designed for. We understand the operational pressures recycling facilities work under, and every machine we build carries that understanding with it.