Economy & Market
Fornnax Unveils the World’s Largest NPD and Demo Centre to Accelerate Global Recycling Innovation
A 12-acre innovation campus enables Fornnax to design, test and validate high-performance recycling solutions at global standards in record time.
Fornnax has launched one of the world’s largest New Product Development (NPD) centres and demo plants, spanning more than 12 acres, marking a major step toward its vision of becoming a global recycling technology leader by 2030. Designed to accelerate real-world innovation, the facility will enable faster product design cycles, large-scale performance validation, and more reliable equipment for high-demand recycling applications.
At the core of the new campus is a live demo plant engineered to support application-specific testing. Fornnax will use this facility to upgrade its entire line of shredders and granulators—enhancing capacity, improving energy efficiency, and reducing downtime. With controlled test environments, machines can be validated for 3,000 to 15,000 hours of operation, ensuring real-world durability and high availability of 18–20 hours per day. This approach gives customers proven performance data before deployment.
“Innovation in product development is the key to becoming a global leader,” said Jignesh Kundariya, Director and CEO of Fornnax. “With this facility, we can design, test and validate new technologies in 6–8 months, compared to 4–5 years in a customer’s plant. Every machine will undergo rigorous Engineering Build (EB) and Manufacturing Build (MB) testing in line with international standards.”
Engineering Excellence Powered by Gate Review Methodology
Fornnax’s NPD framework follows a structured Gate Review Process, ensuring precision and discipline at every step. Projects begin with market research and ideation led by Sales and Marketing, followed by strategic review from the Leadership Team. Detailed engineering is then developed by the Design Team and evaluated by Manufacturing, Service and Safety before approval. A functional prototype is built and tested for 6–8 months, after which the design is optimised for mass production and commercial rollout.
Open-Door Customer Demonstration and Material Testing
The facility features an open-door demonstration model, allowing customers to bring their actual materials and test multiple machines under varied operating conditions. Clients can evaluate performance parameters, compare configurations and make informed purchasing decisions without operational risk.
The centre will also advance research into emerging sectors including E-waste, cables, lithium-ion batteries and niche heterogeneous waste streams. Highly qualified engineering and R&D teams will conduct feasibility studies and performance analysis to develop customised solutions for unfamiliar or challenging materials. This capability reinforces Fornnax’s reputation as a solution-oriented technology provider capable of solving real recycling problems.
Developing Global Recycling Talent
Beyond technology, the facility also houses a comprehensive OEM training centre. It will prepare operators and maintenance technicians for real-world plant conditions. Trainees will gain hands-on experience in assembly, disassembly and grinding operations before deployment at customer sites. Post-training, they will serve as skilled support professionals for Fornnax installations. The company will also deliver corporate training programs for international and domestic clients to enable optimal operation, swift troubleshooting and high-availability performance.
A Roadmap to Capture Global Demand
Fornnax plans to scale its offerings in response to high-growth verticals including Tyre recycling, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), E-waste, Cable and Aluminium recycling. The company is also preparing solutions for new opportunities such as Auto Shredder Residue (ASR) and Lithium-Ion Battery recovery. With research, training, validation and customer engagement housed under one roof, Fornnax is laying the foundation for the next generation of recycling technologies.
“Our goal is to empower customers with clarity and confidence before they invest,” added Kundariya. “This facility allows them to test their own materials, compare equipment and see real performance. It’s not just about selling machines—it’s about building trust through transparency and delivering solutions that work.”
With this milestone, Fornnax reinforces its long-term commitment to enabling industries worldwide with proven, future-ready recycling solutions rooted in innovation, engineering discipline and customer collaboration.
Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology
India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.
According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.
Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.
The Regulatory Push Is Real
The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.
Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.
Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem
Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.
The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.
Engineering a Made-in-India Answer
At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.
Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.
Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.
The Investment Case Is Now
The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.
The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.
The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.
The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.
About The Author
Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.
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