Weightron Bilanciai Ltd have carried out a major overhaul and system upgrade on a Shering weighbridge at the council operated Bossack Waste Transfer and Landfill Facility, located at Tankerness near Kirkwall, in the Orkney Islands.

The project has involved the replacement of the existing load cells on the 12 metre, 30 ton capacity weighbridge, together with the installation of Weightron’s card-operated Self800 driver operated terminal and D520 high visibility remote display in place of the existing instrumentation. Time was of the essence when the upgrade was carried out to ensure there was minimum operational disruption at the site. The complete project, including weights and measures reverification of the new installation, was carried out by Weightron’s engineers in just four days.

The Orkney Islands, which have a population of around 20,000 people, are located off the northern tip of Scotland where the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet. Orkney is an archipelago of 70 or so islands and covers an area of 974 square kilometres, with more than half being taken up by the Mainland of Orkney.

The Bossack installation is one of the UK’s most northerly weighbridges and is used for weighing incoming and outgoing council and private vehicles up to 30 tonne capacity. Waste entering the site includes domestic green waste, commercial waste from private skip hire companies, hazardous waste and waste electrical goods from other islands within Orkney. Products leaving the site for resale include a range of waste recyclables and compost. Weighing is carried out automatically by the delivery-collection drivers, thereby freeing up site operatives to carry out their normal duties. Each vehicle has its own designated swipe card and operators can have multiple cards.

Orkney Council’s Operational Waste Team Leader Jonathan Walters is very pleased with the way the project has been handled and as he concludes: “Weightron engineers worked closely with our personnel and the installation was carried out within our tight time restraints. The new driver operated system is extremely versatile and offers us important advantages over the original system. Drivers leaving site, having deposited their loads at the relevant area within the site, are required to fill in additional information via pre-set selections on the Selfbox screen. This includes the type of waste delivered and the source destination. This provides council management with comprehensive waste data from which we can measure the effectiveness of the five civic amenity centres together with other waste collection streams. Data is downloaded daily to the site computer from the Selfbox and we have the future option for remote data access via Ethernet.”