Supplier News

QED invests in Michigan campus

QED Environmental Systems Inc., an environmental products and systems producer, including some designed for landfill gas collection and landfill remediation, has increased production capacity at its manufacturing facility in Dexter, Michigan, as part of its global transition to centralize all production under one roof.

The company, a subsidiary of Graco Inc., Minnesota, says the transition also will see the Dexter facility become QED’s global calibration and service hub.

QED’s ongoing investments include the recent expansion of the calibration lab and recruitment of two new territory managers for its Europe, Middle East and Africa region—Mitchell Perry, a new United Kingdom territory manager, and Zafar Iqbal, hired as QED’s Middle East and Africa territory manager.

“Centralizing our manufacturing operations under one site will enable the company to continue to innovate and create environmental technology fit for the future,” QED President Mark Weinberger says.

“Our R&D and production teams will be able to work side by side, under the same roof as our service and calibration teams. This is a landmark moment in QED’s 42-year history and will prove critical to the next four decades of success and beyond.”

QED manufactures products used in several applications, including biogas and biomethane production, groundwater and landfill remediation, landfill collection and control, landfill leachate and condensate pumping, landfill and biogas analysis, groundwater and soil sampling, water treatment and leak detection in the medical, oil and gas and water industries.

Volvo Group to add plant in Mexico

Sweden-based Volvo Group, which makes and manufactures trucks under the Volvo Trucks and Mack Trucks brands, will build a new heavy-duty truck manufacturing plant in Mexico.

The company says the third North American plant, joining others in Pennsylvania and Virginia, will supplement the group’s United States production, providing additional capacity to support the growth plans of both Volvo Trucks and Mack Trucks in the U.S. and Canadian markets and support Mack truck sales in Mexico and Latin America.

The Mack LVO plant in Pennsylvania and the NRV plant in Virginia will continue to be Volvo Group’s main North American heavy truck production sites, with the company noting it has invested more than $73 million the last five years in Pennsylvania and currently is investing an additional $80 million to prepare for future production.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, that plant is completing a six-year, $400 million expansion and upgrade to prepare for production of the company’s new Volvo VNL model.

Mack Trucks’ product line includes trucks designed for the collection of solid waste and recyclables.

The plant in Mexico is expected to be operational in 2026 and will be about 1.7 million square feet. It will focus on the production of heavy-duty conventional vehicles for the Volvo and Mack brands and be a complete conventional vehicle assembly facility including cab body-in-white production and paint.

WasteRobotics and Greyparrot form partnership

Canadian company Waste Robotics has partnered with artificial intelligence (AI) waste analytics company Greyparrot, based in London.

At the outset of the partnership, Waste Robotics is using the Greyparrot Analyzer, an AI camera system deployed at global sorting facilities, to characterize material streams and understand the opportunities for automated robotic sorting.

“This strategic partnership between Waste Robotics and Greyparrot highlights our joint commitment to delivering customized, data-driven solutions perfectly suited to our clients’ needs,” says Ziad Akl-Chedid, vice president of products at Waste Robotics. “With the Robot Validator, we are confident in our ability to assist customers in maximizing ROI [return on investment] and minimizing payback. Our modular sorting solutions are specifically designed to adapt to various circumstances and use cases.”

Known as the Robot Validator, the technology pairing enables Waste Robotics to analyze the performance and cost of deploying different robotic systems to identify the best solution. The aim is to model the future implementation of Waste Robotics’ sorting solutions to ensure operational efficiency for clients across diverse waste management sectors.

In May, Greyparrot announced that Norwalk, Connecticut-based Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, which services more than 50 percent of the U.S. waste management market, will serve as the sole distributor of the Grayparrot Analyzer across all 50 states.