Tasmanian Alkaloids – Westbury, Tasmania

Owned by Johnson & Johnson and used to process poppies for pharmaceutical products. The machine installed was a RUF 800 with a special 150 x 120 briquette size to reduce storage volume of the poppy straw after the seed has been separated.  

All the poppy crops are harvested from mid-December until mid-April. The harvested material comes into the Tasmanian Alkaloids factory where the pods are crushed and the seeds screened out. They are left with crushed pods and straw that is processed in another area of the plant to produce such products as codeine and morphine. With this massive influx of straw, Tasmanian Alkaloids has run out of storage and with increased yields expected over the next few years, they have a major issue. 

Briquetting the material solves the storage issue, but then we have to break up the briquettes so they can be sent to the other processing plant. This needs to be done without damaging the straw or creating more fines/dust. At the moment the Erdwich shredding company are doing some trials to break the briquettes up again for the processing of the straw through their system. We are now waiting on feedback from Tasmanian Alkaloids.

Equipment: RUF 800 Briquette Press