A Bury firm has developed a new system to help clean Britain’s canals and keep them flowing freely.

The system will now hit the market after a successful pilot scheme.

DRM Industrial Fabrics’ environmentally-friendly Sedi-filter has already been used successfully in the Midlands on a British Waterways project to dredge canals so they can be used by boats.

DRM has a turnover of £3m and employs more than 50 people at its Bond Street headquarters, where it manufactures a range of fabrics used for filtration and in the laundry industry.

The Sedi-filter system works by pumping the canal’s contents into giant porous bags. The water then passes through the fabric while the sediment is contained inside and can then be taken away.

DRM managing director Peter McGuinness said: “The pilot project has been a tremendous success, leading to the national launch for the product.

“The main advantage is theremoval of the water from the sediment, transferring it into a drier state, which helps handling and enables the sediment to be disposed of to landfill or used elsewhere.”

The volume of solid waste that needs to be taken away is also significantly reduced as up to 90 per cent of the water is removed.

Simon Potter, of Midlands-based Blue Boar Contracts, has a national contract to dredge canals for British Waterways and tested the Sedi-filter system on a three-kilometre stretch of the Birmingham and Worcester Canal.

He said: “The use of the Sedi-filter system means that we don’t have to add anything to the contaminated sediment to treat it before it is disposed of.

“That means we don’t have to have a special licence to deal with the waste and we are not increasing the weight of the sludge.

“We can dry it out so it can be accepted to landfill and, because the water is extracted, we are actually reducing the amount we are taking away, which means lower transport costs and less weight at the landfill weighbridge.”

The system can also be used to create artificial weirs and reefs in watercourses and, in the marine environment, for erosion control or recreation.

Tweet