From its early days as a family-owned business in the 1920s, The Malcolm Group has become one of the leading providers of logistics, construction and maintenance services in the UK.
Malcolm Construction, a division of The Malcolm Group, has embarked upon a second project with wet processing industry experts CDE to install a 150 tonnes per hour construction and demolition (C&D) waste recycling facility at its Beith site. The move is an example of the Scottish business’s commitment to developing sustainable business solutions.
With its head office in Glasgow and additional facilities in Scotland’s south-west at Irvine (Shewalton Quarry) and Beith (Loanhead Quarry), Malcolm Construction provides comprehensive civil engineering and groundwork services and has earned an enviable reputation for quality service and problem-solving. Projects are delivered either on a standalone basis or as part of a larger package for major contractors, local authorities and engineers.
Its construction and demolition waste treatment, transfer and recycling business is an asset within its service. Its three facilities are dedicated to sorting recyclable materials to provide high-quality recycled aggregates, topsoil, and subsoil. Waste is sorted and sent to specialist reprocessors for further processing at the sites. These procedures minimise waste sent to landfill, increase recycling rates and reduce Malcolm Construction’s environmental impact.
At its Beith facility, Malcolm Construction identified that landfill space for waste products it could not treat and repurpose was becoming exhausted. Therefore, the company set an objective to divert over 500,000 tonnes of material a year from landfill. In addition, as a forward-thinking organisation, the company sought to develop marketable and innovative solutions with a broad range of applications in the construction sector.
Ten years ago, the company worked with CDE to install a 70 tonnes per hour recycling wash plant at its Shewalton Quarry. The plant continues to operate to the company’s great benefit and has diverted over one and a half million tonnes from landfill to date. However, it could no longer meet growing demand alone as a small capacity plant.
Therefore, the team at Malcolm Construction spent five years carefully researching all options for developing a new wash plant at the Loanhead site. This included considering several brands on the market and visiting a range of CDE reference sites across the UK to observe different plant set-up options. The company concluded with certainty that CDE could offer them the best solution to meet their production requirements and decided to invest.
As the site is an existing hard rock quarry, which produces a wide range of aggregates, the solution developed by CDE can conserve their natural reserve and save tipping space.
Graeme Lindsay, waste transfer & recycling operations manager, explained: “Our investment was a very considered one and based on intensive research done over a number of years. We have had a ten-year relationship with CDE and greatly value its ‘Customer for Life’ model; we have had nothing but positive experiences. In addition, we felt that this investment was our best approach to delivering on our sustainability goals by saving void capacity, extending the life of hard rock reserves, developing resources from waste and aligning with further long-term business goals.”
CDE’s C&D waste recycling facility consists of an R4500 primary feeding and screening system, AggMax 252R logwasher, EvoWash sand washing fine material classification plant, AquaCycle A600 thickener and Filter Press sludge dewatering system that increases water recycling to more than 95%.
Proven solutions from CDE provide maximum recycling potential and full water treatment, which considerably reduce waste-to-landfill volumes. Indeed, the plant was set to process waste at 150 tonnes per hour but has been overachieving design capacity since commissioning at the Beith site.
Walter Malcolm, managing director of the Malcolm Group Construction Service division, said: “We overcame any issues in the installation process together with CDE – which were to be expected with a project of this scale – and we also had to deal with COVID risking holding us back. I think it has been extraordinary that we managed to get the plant finished in the time we did and up and running as quickly as we did as well.”
The plant is already proving its effectiveness and delivering high-quality in-spec products for Malcolm Construction, including 0-2mm soft sand and 0-4mm concrete sand. The products will be used for concrete production, pipe bedding, and backfilling utility tracks, amongst other applications.
David Kinloch, director of business development UK & Ireland at CDE, said: “We have been long-term partners with Malcolm Construction and have always had a great working relationship, so we were pleased when they confirmed they wanted to re-invest with CDE to install a new plant at a second company location.
“The waste recycling solution we have installed is already providing new products for the company, to the benefit of its business objectives in terms of return on investment and sustainability goals. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Malcolm Construction and witnessing the effectiveness of this new plant.”
Walter Malcolm added: “CDE, as they know, were not the cheapest option. However, we decided to go for the most cost-effective option for ourselves and for our customers as well, that provides the best return on investment.
“We knew the support we get from CDE, and we also know the quality and material we are going to produce. That, for us, made it quite a straightforward decision to partner with CDE again. It’s been a first-class experience, and the build quality is excellent.
He concluded: “Sustainability is very important for us at Malcolm Construction. We’ve been operating here as a family business for nearly 100 years. We’d like to be here for another 100 years and value the contribution of CDE technology to making that ambition a reality.”
