Maingate (News - Alert), a Scandinavian M2M provider, has made an agreement with Europress regarding remote monitoring of waste handling solutions. Every day, huge amounts of cardboard cartons need to be handled, especially at supermarkets and shopping centers. A traditional waste management approach is to use a container machine that compacts the cartons together so they take as little space as possible.

Timo Huhtala, head of development at Europress, said, “Our business idea is that we help our customers to avoid transporting air. The solution is to compact the waste to a minimum. Only when a container is completely filled with hard-pressed packaging waste is it time to transport it.”

When a container nears becoming full, a signal is transmitted and forwarded to a transporter. The transporter can then empty the container at exactly the right time, which means unnecessary journeys are avoided to half empty containers. Over-full containers can also be avoided. All this is positive from an environmental perspective. “Another benefit is that we can handle many smaller service actions without sending out a technician,” said Huhtala.

Such service actions are carried out because the machines are being remotely steered with M2M technology. For customers, this represents a distinct increase in availability with fewer and shorter interruptions.