IN Brief:
- CDE will showcase its ProPress filter press at Hillhead 2026.
- The company is targeting sand, aggregates, construction waste, and clay recovery applications.
- The focus aligns with demand for wet processing systems that support circular materials and lower waste disposal.
CDE will return to Hillhead 2026 to showcase its ProPress filter press and demonstrate applications across wet processing, aggregates, construction waste recycling, and clay recovery.
The company will exhibit at Stand A11, with the ProPress X4 filter press forming a central part of its line-up. CDE first launched ProPress at Hillhead 2024 and has since installed the system across a range of global applications.
The technology is aimed at materials producers handling sand, aggregates, waste recycling, and related wet processing operations. CDE is also using the event to highlight recovered clay, positioning it as a material stream with potential value rather than a waste by-product.
Potential sources include clay recovered from overburden, construction, demolition, and excavation waste, dredging material, tunnelling spoil, and other processed streams. The company has linked the work to circular materials production and to the search for supplementary cementitious materials that can reduce clinker use in cement.
Filter press technology supports that approach by dewatering fine material streams and converting sludge into more manageable filter cake. For quarries, recyclers, and contractors, the process can reduce reliance on settling ponds, improve water recovery, simplify material handling, and create clearer routes for recovering value from fines.
Hillhead has become a major platform for suppliers targeting quarrying, recycling, aggregates, and construction materials buyers. CDE’s return with ProPress follows the same equipment-led direction seen in SBM’s plans to target UK and Irish buyers at Hillhead with hybrid-electric crushing and mobile concrete production technology. Across both examples, the machinery focus is shifting towards recovery, efficiency, and materials performance rather than output volume alone.
The construction materials sector is under pressure to reduce waste and extract more value from existing material streams. Primary aggregate demand remains closely tied to housebuilding, infrastructure, roads, and commercial development, while clients are asking for recycled content, lower embodied carbon, and stronger material traceability.
Wet processing systems sit directly inside that transition. The ability to wash, classify, recover, and dewater materials determines whether construction waste and quarry by-products can move into usable markets. Without reliable processing, circular materials ambitions remain dependent on inconsistent feedstock and limited end-use confidence.
Clay recovery is a particularly difficult part of that equation. Fine clay-rich material can create handling problems, affect wash plant efficiency, increase disposal costs, and occupy valuable space on site. If recovered clay can be processed into a consistent and useful output, it gives producers another route to reduce waste and create value from previously problematic material.
The commercial case will depend on more than the machine itself. End markets need evidence on specification, consistency, durability, and compliance. Supplementary cementitious material applications, in particular, require technical validation and stable quality control. Equipment suppliers are therefore being drawn further into process design, application testing, and materials development.
Water management adds another driver. Many materials processing sites face pressure over water availability, permitting, settlement lagoons, and environmental controls. Filter presses can reduce the amount of water tied up in waste streams, supporting more compact and controlled plant layouts.
CDE’s Hillhead presence places ProPress within that broader production shift. The most competitive plant investments are increasingly those that support waste reduction, water recovery, carbon reporting, safer material handling, and more consistent product output. As construction clients demand stronger evidence of circularity, systems that make waste streams measurable and recoverable will move closer to the centre of materials procurement.
