Material Recovery
Assembly Line
AMP Robotics settles into new Colorado headquarters as it eyes future MRF tech and AI plans
To date, AMP has installed a fleet of almost 300 robots in facilities around the world, and it has further plans to expand into the European market. The company says its AI-powered “neural network,” shared by all the robots, can recognize about 75 billion objects a year.
In November, AMP officially opened its nearly 84,000-square-foot headquarters in Louisville, Colorado, which the company says gives it the R&D, manufacturing and demonstration space necessary to carry out some of its long-term plans. Though AI-assisted robotic technology is still the company’s focal point, CEO Matanya Horowitz has moved in recent years to expand its horizons, most recently by opening three company-run secondary sortation facilities, one a few miles away in Denver and two more in Cleveland and Atlanta. Breaking into that kind of operation is a fairly unique move among MRF equipment companies and within the industry in general.
AMP plans to eventually go public, “but I wouldn’t say that that’s a near-term thing. We’re not ready yet,” Horowitz said. “We have hundreds of robots out there. We have whole facilities now. And so bringing on additional capital to scale that further is really the goal.”
Plastic reuse program could become permanent in Tucson
Instead, the plastic was sent to ByFusion, a California company that places plastic into a patented machine that uses steam and compression to churn out 22-pound blocks that fit together with interlocking pegs. Since the material is all superheated, ByFusion can take the discarded food packaging, plastic grocery bags and bubble wrap that standard recycling plants often can’t process.
While the company has collaborated with other municipalities throughout the country, ByFusion CEO Heidi Kujawa said Tucson’s pilot program has been “one of the first in this capacity,” and that “Tucson looks like they could be the first in the world,” to adopt the infrastructure to make the program an official city service.
“One of the reasons why we did the pilot is to just learn and understand how the community was going to react to a service like this,” she said. “Now that we’re armed with that information, it’s clear that we would have increased participation if we were to provide some extending services outside of drop-off locations.”