Here at Greenbank, we stock a wide range of vertical balers, from smaller, more compact models such as the Bramidan B3 baler or B4 balers, to large mill size models, such as the B50. But which vertical baler is perfect for your business’s needs?
In this guide, we’re going to look at the factors that you should consider when buying a vertical baler, followed by a handy list of their pros and cons – this should help you get a step closer to making up your mind regarding which baler would best suit your waste management needs.
Before we dive in, let’s quickly recap what a vertical baler is and why you need one.
What Is A Vertical Baler And Why You Need One
Vertical balers quite simply compress loose recyclables into tight bales. They achieve this by using a strong press plate to compress the waste down into a far smaller, tighter bale. Some of the benefits include:
- You save on space by replacing the vast amount of wheelie bins in your facility with a baler.
- Adding a vertical baler to your waste management process will help you reduce costs, due to less collections.
- The finished bale can be sold to recycling plants in order to create an additional income for your business. In most cases, this alone will help you pay off the baler.
- Baling your waste reduces the amount of cardboard, plastic, paper and other such materials being sent to landfill.
Factors To Consider When Buying A Vertical Baler
1. The type of material you need to compact
The type of material that you wish to recycle will largely determine which vertical baler is best suited for your business. Depending on whether you need to recycle cardboard, plastic or aluminum, the following vertical balers would be best suited for your needs:
| Material | Recommended Balers |
| Cardboard/Paper | We’d recommend our range of Bramidan B-series balers such as the B4 through to the B50. |
| Plastic | For softer plastics, we’d recommend our range of B-series balers, such as the B20 plastic baler. But for more challenging plastics such as PET bottles, you should turn to the X-series balers (for example, the X25 hydraulic baler). |
| Aluminum | We’d recommend X-series balers. |
Note that whilst you can use the same baler for different materials, you should not bale both types of waste at the same time as this can lead to waste contamination. Waste that is contaminated cannot be recyclable. Therefore, we’d recommend separating your waste and baling them individually.
2. What’s your waste production volume?
Once you have narrowed down your options by the type of waste material you’re producing, the next step would be to figure out what your waste production volume is. This will help you narrow down your options based on baler capacity. If you’re a small business, you’ll likely only need a small vertical baler – these can produce bales of 30-60kg and can be easily managed by a single person.
For larger businesses with high waste production volumes, you’re very likely to require a vertical baler with a much larger capacity – we’d recommend mill size baler models X50, B50 and B30W.
Another consideration to make is the estimated growth of your business. As your business grows so will your waste production so you do not want to limit your growth because of an insufficient baler capacity.
3. Where will the baler be located?
Space is of course a very important factor to consider when choosing a vertical baler. As touched on before, the B-series range of vertical balers offers a more compact package but they can be on the taller side, whereas the X-series balers are specifically designed for lower ceilings. We’d always recommend that you check the baler size to ensure it’s a good fit for your space.
4. What size bales do you require?
There are two considerations to make regarding bale size:
- What bale size is most convenient for you to store? If you don’t have a lot of available storage space, you may lean towards smaller balers that produce small bale sizes of 30-60kg. On the other hand, if you have a much larger storage area, it’s going to be far more convenient to produce larger bales.
- Do you want to maximise your rebates? When it comes to selling your bales, it’s important to note that recyclers will pay more for mill-size bales (this is because they are ready to go into the mill and do not have to be combined with other, smaller bales to achieve the desired size). Choosing a larger vertical baler that produces mill-size bales will help you maximise your returns.
5. How will you power the baler?
One of the most important considerations to make is whether you have the correct power supply. For the smaller balers, you will require single-phase electric power to get them going, whereas the medium to larger vertical balers will require a three-phase power supply. Be sure to also check that your power supply matches up with the needs of your selected baler too – this means checking the voltage, hertz and Amps.
6. What’s your budget?
Last of all, consider what your budget for buying a vertical baler is. You need to find a baler that hits the sweetspot between being exactly what you need (you don’t want to overspend to get features you’ll never use), takes into account future capacity and but also doesn’t blow the budget.
When setting your budget it’s important to keep in mind that a baler is an investment – not only will it help you save money on waste management but, if you choose to sell your baled waste, it will help you create an additional revenue stream for your business. At Greenbank, we offer free waste audits that help you grasp which baler would be best suited for your business based on your waste volumes.
Pros & Cons Of A Vertical Baler
To help you make your vertical baler decision even easier, let’s have a look at the pros and cons of vertical balers:
Pros
- Vertical balers help you save money by reducing waste management costs.
- You can sell baled materials such as cardboard to create another revenue stream for your business.
- The B and X range vertical balers are more or less as loud as a normal conversation (60dB).
- Safe and easy to use by a single person.
- Balers have the ability to handle a wide variety of material types.
- Less waste is sent to landfill making your business more sustainable.
- It reduces your carbon footprint for two reasons: 1) The balers are energy efficient, and 2) Fewer waste collections are required which reduces CO2 emissions.
- Vertical balers are an affordable option.
Cons
- It’s a manual baler so an operator is required to load it and turn it on/off. If you’d prefer to automate the process, you can explore our range of semi-automatic and fully-automatic balers.
- If your waste production volume increases in the future, you may have to purchase a larger baler. This is why we recommend taking future growth into account when choosing the perfect baler for your business.
Explore Our Vertical Baler Range
We hope that this vertical baler buying guide has helped you decide which baling machine is best suited for your business’s waste management needs. If you’d like more information please do get in touch with our Sales Team using the link below:
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