New sorting center to serve as a model in Quebec

Quebec’s most automated sorting center for recyclable materials is now in operation. The new facility in Montreal’s east end is intended to serve as a model for the transformation of sorting infrastructures in the province over the coming years.

Operated by Matrec, a division of FGL, the center will be able to process over 150,000 tonnes of containers, packaging and printed matter annually. It relies on a significant amount of state-of-the-art equipment through which materials circulate, making sorting work more efficient. The infrastructure is designed to handle 15-20 per cent of Quebec’s selective collection tonnage.

The new center was inaugurated on Friday afternoon in the presence of Benoit Charette, Minister of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks. But it has been officially operational since the beginning of January when the province’s curbside recycling reform came into effect.

“It’s the first modernized sorting center in Quebec with the most advanced technology in Canada,” says the head of the organization newly responsible for the province’s selective collection system.

“For us, this will also be a laboratory to ensure that we can develop a network of high-performance sorting centers to properly manage the material that citizens put in their recycling bins,” says Maryse Vermette, CEO of Éco Entreprises Québec.

At this new Montreal center, machines do most of the sorting. The twenty or so sorters who work there – referred to by the company as “quality agents” – are more concerned with “the finishing touches”, explains Carl D’Astous, Matrec’s Director of Special Projects.

Process efficiency is greatly enhanced by an automated pre-sorting system and more than fifteen optical sorters to distinguish materials as they arrive.

“The amount of material an optical sorter can sort, as opposed to a sorter, is two completely different worlds,” recounted Mr. D’Astous, during a media tour of the facility on Friday.

The building also boasts two process lines, ensuring continuity of operations should one of them break down. Each line can handle 26 tonnes of material per hour.

The contract to design, manufacture and install the sorting system was awarded to Machinex, a company based in Plessisville in the Centre-du-Québec region, which exports its expertise around the world.

Construction took just under a year, and was financed entirely by the private sector. The Quebec government, for its part, has specified the rules surrounding the quality and outlets for the materials that will be taken back by the “valorizers”, said Minister Charette.

A first milestone

According to Matrec-GFL regional vice-president Yazan Kano, the opening of the new center “now becomes a model for the future of sorting in Quebec”.

This is “a first milestone” in the upgrading of Quebec’s sorting centers, emphasizes Ms. Vermette.

“Quebec needs to evolve its sorting infrastructures. There has been little investment in recent years. We now have sorting infrastructures that need to be optimized and improved,” she says.

Modernization projects are planned over the next few years. New facilities will also be built. Last fall, Éco Entreprises Québec announced the construction of a new sorting center in the Eastern Townships, scheduled to open in January 2028.

Quebec currently has a total of 21 sorting centers.

Corrected version. In a dispatch sent out on Friday, The Canadian Press erroneously wrote that the sorting center had a dozen optical sorters. In reality, it has some fifteen.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews