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The first production model of a new soil sterilising machine, designed to remove invasive weeds from used farming and horticultural soils, has been exported to a customer in the Netherlands by Arbroath developers, Reekie Manufacturing.

With additional UK and international clients poised to follow the unit’s commercial progress over the next few months, Reekie Manufacturing’s project manager John Baxter says the company’s soil sterilising processor has the potential to create local employment opportunities in sales, marketing, service and production.

“We’ve been working on this unit since 2020 when we first developed a prototype which we tested on soil sourced from a vegetable processing factory and recycling business,” he said.

“We were able to heat a consignment of used soil to 80 degrees through the new processor, successfully removing invasive weeds, including troublesome species such as Japanese knotweed.”

Although the company’s commercial sale is to a municipal waste management business in the north of the Netherlands, Mr Baxter is already talking to potential farming and horticulture clients in England, Ireland, Israel, Norway, France and Portugal.

“One interested UK business for example, regularly has 50,000 tonnes of soil to deal with each year, after removing it from vegetables which it takes in for processing,” he said.

“That soil has to be cleaned before it can be returned to productive use or has to be treated as a waste product.  Our solution is to feed it through the processor to enable it to be used again without any risk of spreading invasive weeds into new crops.”

The current sale into the Netherlands follows a series of commercial trials which was carried out in the country in 2021.  These featured seven types of soils and materials, all of which were treated according to the client’s requirements.

“We first started looking at the development of a soil cleaning solution after contact from a manufacturer of super heated steam boilers, based in Germany,” said Mr Baxter.

“They were looking for a new design after previous attempts to sterilise soils failed, mainly due to the problems caused by abrasive stones and excessive wear to machinery.

“With our former company background in the creation of the Reekie Stone and Clod Separator back in the 1970s, we knew where to start.  The prototype we subsequently built became the foundation for today’s production machine, complete with a throughput capacity of 30m³ of soil per hour.

“We will also need to gather further scientific data to enable the production and sale of the processor to move forward.  We are already in talks with relevant specialists in the UK and Ireland to advance this part of the project, while also tracking the commercial progress of our first production model in the Netherlands.”

In addition to its current sales advance, the processor has also gained funding support from Angus Council under its Business Improvement Grant (BIG), securing one of seven awards of £25,000 in March this year.

Part of the Reekie Engineering Group, the manufacturing business operates out of Kirkton Industrial Estate, Arbroath.

“This is a very important development for us and a new chapter for Reekie Manufacturing.” said Mr Baxter.