CP Group is proud to announce that the CP Auger Silo has been named the 2026 Recycling Equipment Innovator of the Year by the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA).
The annual NWRA Recycling Awards recognize organizations, facilities and technologies advancing recycling and resource recovery through innovation and measurable results. The award marks CP Group’s second Recycling Equipment Innovator of the Year recognition, following the company’s 2022 award for its non-round OCC Auger Screen.
The CP Auger Silo was developed to address a longstanding challenge at the back end of material recovery facilities: efficiently storing recovered commodities and delivering them to the baler in controlled quantities.
Traditional storage systems can leave usable capacity unfilled, deliver inconsistent volumes of material to the baler and create partial bales during commodity changeovers. These conditions can contribute to additional cleanup, re-baling, downtime and inefficient use of one of a MRF’s most important assets—the baler.
Rethinking Commodity Storage and Bale Feed
Rather than relying on conventional doors, walking floors or unmetered discharge, the CP Auger Silo combines automated leveling, dual-auger metering, reversible operation, sensing and integrated controls into one storage and feed system.
At the base of the silo, two counter-rotating augers meter a consistent flow of material onto the baling line. The augers can be programmed by commodity to deliver material in whole-bale increments, helping eliminate the guesswork associated with conventional discharge systems.
The augers can also reverse, pulling residual material back into the silo during commodity changes. This helps keep the bale-feed conveyor clear between materials and reduces the potential for cross-commodity contamination.
Above the stored material, an automated leveling auger distributes incoming commodity throughout the silo rather than allowing material to accumulate in a center peak. By utilizing more of the available footprint, the design provides approximately 30% greater usable storage capacity compared with conventional sloped-floor storage based on CP Group’s modeled and field-informed estimates.
Automation Designed Around the Operator
Integrated photo eyes, level sensors and lasers continuously monitor silo fill levels and communicate with the CP Group controls platform. Operators can select the commodity and desired number of bales, allowing the system to automatically meter the corresponding quantity of material to the baler.
This gives operators greater control over when and how much material is baled. Instead of completely emptying a silo, operators can create only the storage capacity needed to keep the sorting system operating through the next break, shift change or scheduled baling sequence.
The result is a more controlled approach to container storage and baling designed to deliver:
- Consistent, whole-bale output
- Greater usable storage capacity
- Higher baler utilization and system uptime
- Reduced partial-bale cleanup and re-baling
- Cleaner commodity changeovers
- Reduced manual handling and maintenance requirements
- More efficient use of labor and equipment
CP Group’s operational analysis indicates that baler utilization can improve from approximately 70% with traditional feeding systems to more than 90% with the Auger Silo feed system, while automated leveling can provide approximately 30% more usable storage capacity.
Built on Decades of Auger and MRF Experience
The technology builds on CP Group’s decades of experience engineering equipment and complete systems for material recovery facilities. CP Group’s in-house manufacturing capabilities include proprietary auger flight forming, fabrication, electrical engineering and controls integration, allowing the mechanical and automation components of the Auger Silo to be developed as one coordinated system.
The Auger Silo also represents the continued evolution of CP Group’s auger-based material-handling technology. While the company’s award-winning OCC Auger Screen brought auger technology to front-end screening, the Auger Silo applies that expertise at the back end of the MRF—automating commodity storage and controlled bale feed.
Today, the CP Auger Silo is in commercial operation at multiple high-volume MRFs across the United States and has become a standard element of CP Group’s newest container-line designs and back-end modernization proposals.
Continuing a Legacy of Recycling Innovation
Since 1977, CP Group has designed and manufactured recycling equipment and complete material recovery systems from its headquarters in San Diego, California. The company combines equipment engineering, manufacturing, controls and real-world MRF operating experience to develop technologies focused on increasing recovery, efficiency and uptime.
The 2026 NWRA Recycling Equipment Innovator of the Year award further recognizes CP Group’s commitment to solving practical operational challenges through equipment innovation and automation.
This article was originally published on October 7, 2026 in Waste360.
