Choosing a scrap baler comes down to three questions answered in order: what material you process, how many tonnes you move at peak, and what bale format your buyer will accept. Everything else — power, mobility, automation, options — follows from those answers. Get the order wrong and you buy a machine sized for an average day that fails on your busiest one. Roter (R.F. Srl) designs and builds three families of heavy-duty scrap metal balers in Ferrara, Italy, and this guide walks through the decision the way our engineers do when they size a machine with a customer.
Thirty Years of Heavy Engineering, Applied to One Problem
Roter was founded in Ferrara in 2014, on three decades of heavy-engineering experience that came before it. The question that shaped the company has not changed since: how do you turn a yard full of bulky, irregular metal into a product that travels efficiently and sells consistently?
That question has an uncomfortable implication for anyone buying a press. A baler is not a general-purpose machine. It is engineered around a particular kind of material behaving in a particular way, and the further your scrap sits from that design intent, the more the machine costs you in cycle time, wear and disappointment. Which is why the specification conversation has to start with your material, not with a datasheet.
Start With the Material, Not the Machine
Scrap resists compression differently depending on what it is. A depolluted car shell is hollow and springs back. Light mixed scrap packs unevenly. Structural sections and heavy plate arrive too long to go into a box at all. Each of those is a different engineering problem, and each points to a different machine.
- Car bodies and end-of-life vehicles. Hollow, irregular, and most resistant at the end of the stroke. This is compaction work: see the car baler page.
- Light mixed ferrous and non-ferrous scrap. Volume reduction is the goal, and consistency of output is what your mill pays for.
- Heavy, long or bulky ferrous scrap — beams, plate, pipework, reinforcement steel. If it will not fit the box, compaction alone cannot help you. This is where a shear baler earns its place.
- Continuous industrial arisings — turnings, offcuts, production scrap arriving on a conveyor all shift. Here the constraint is not force but labour, and automation answers it.
If your streams are mixed, work from the dominant one and check the machine will handle the others acceptably. Our decision matrix by material stream sets this out stream by stream.
Then Measure the Tonnage — and Measure the Peak
The most common sizing error is averaging. A yard that handles a steady flow four days a week and clears a backlog on the fifth does not need a machine built for the average; it needs one that absorbs the fifth day without becoming the bottleneck. Measure tonnes per hour at your busiest, not across the month.
For reference, Roter rates the RR5/RR6 baler at 15–20 tonnes per hour on end-of-life vehicles and 8–14 tonnes per hour on light mixed scrap. Those are published figures from our product data. Real output depends on your material and your feeding method, which is why our engineers confirm throughput against your actual scrap before quoting rather than after. The method is set out in how to size a baler for your yard’s tonnage.
Three Ranges, Three Different Jobs
With material and tonnage established, the range selects itself:
| Machine | Built for | Key facts |
|---|---|---|
| RR5 / RR6 baler | Car dismantlers, demolition sites, scrap yards and steel works baling bulky and mixed scrap | Box length 5 m (RR5) or 6 m (RR6) · 15–20 t/h on end-of-life vehicles, 8–14 t/h on light mixed scrap · no foundation required |
| RR715.6 shear baler | Yards and demolition contractors that need to bale and cut heavy, bulky ferrous scrap | 715-tonne class · four programmes: Dense Bale, Bale for Mills, Shear, Shear with Pre-compression · transportable in a single unit |
| RA Series automatic baler | Industrial and steel plants with continuous scrap flows | Fully automatic baling that fits a structured workflow and removes a manual labour line |
One distinction is worth stating plainly, because it is the one buyers most often blur. A baler compacts; a shear baler compacts and cuts. The RR5/RR6 does not shear. If your buyer wants cut scrap, or your material is too long or heavy to bale at all, no amount of compaction force substitutes for a shear. The full comparison is in scrap baler vs shear baler.
What the Numbers on a Datasheet Actually Tell You
Specifications are only useful once you know which ones matter. These are the RR5/RR6 figures, and what each one decides:
| Specification | RR5 | RR6 |
|---|---|---|
| Box material | HARDOX 400/450 | HARDOX 400/450 |
| Box length | 5,000 mm | 6,000 mm |
| Opened box width | 1,850 mm | 1,850 mm |
| Cylinders per lid | 3 | 3 |
| Lid force | 200 t | 200 t |
| Main cylinder force | 155 t | 155 t |
| Bale size | 880 × 650 mm | 880 × 650 mm |
| Working pressure | 280 bar | 280 bar |
| Engine power | 55 / 75 kW | 55 / 75 kW |
| Weight | 21 t | 22 t |
Box length decides what fits without pre-cutting — the single most practical difference between the RR5 and the RR6. Force has to match your heaviest regular material, not your average load. Bale size is dictated by your buyer, not by you. And weight matters more than it looks: 21 to 22 tonnes is what makes the machine transportable on a trailer rather than a permanent civil-works project.
The Bale Your Buyer Will Accept
A bale is a product with a specification, and the specification belongs to whoever buys it. Ask your mill or trader what size and density they accept before you compare presses, not after. Every machine in the RR Series runs Dense Bale and Bale for Mills cycles; the RR715.6 adds Shear and Shear with Pre-compression, so one machine can serve a buyer who wants bales and a buyer who wants cut scrap.
Density is also where the transport arithmetic lives. Dense bales fill a truck by weight rather than by volume, which is the mechanism behind most of the saving a press delivers — explained in why bale density changes scrap transport economics.
The Site Question: Foundations, Power and Mobility
For many operators the obstacle to baling has never been the press. It has been the building work that comes with it.
Roter’s answer? The RR5/RR6 requires no foundation in any configuration. The outcome: no civil works before the first bale, and a choice of format to suit the site — fixed for a permanent station, roll-on/roll-off on a hook-lift truck, semi-mobile for repositioning within the yard, or mounted on a three-axle trailer for operators who bale across several sites. Diesel power (Perkins or CAT) is standard, with a 75 kW electric motor available on request and a 90 kW option.
If you rent your yard, expect to move, or simply want to start baling sooner, that flexibility changes the shape of the project. Further reading: no foundation, no compromise and semi-mobile vs fixed baler installation.
Why Three Cylinders, Not Two
Compression force inside a baler is not constant. It climbs steeply as material is driven towards the discharge door, where the highest loads of the entire cycle occur. A car shell, hollow and springy, resists hardest exactly there.
Roter’s solution? Three cylinders per lid rather than two, positioned asymmetrically to concentrate force where the material pushes back hardest. The outcome: tighter, more uniform bales, and load shared across the structure instead of concentrated in one component. The engineering is set out in three cylinders, not two.
Around that core sit components chosen for service life rather than specification sheets: a Parker PV Plus Series main pump, a HARDOX 400/450 box, a 7″ or 10″ touch screen, radio remote control that lets one operator load from the crane and run the cycle, and a light and sound signal system. Options cover the conditions a yard actually faces — a grapple with rotor in 250, 280 or 300-litre sizes, an air-conditioned cabin, preheated hydraulic oil and a preheated engine for winter starts, automatic greasing, a liquid collection tank, an emergency spare-parts kit.
The Cost That Arrives After the Invoice
Purchase price is the figure every comparison starts with and the one that explains least. A baler is a long-service asset working in dust, weather and high loads, and what decides its cost over that life is how quickly it returns to work when something needs attention.
Every Roter machine includes:
- Installation and commissioning on site, by the technicians who know the machine
- Operator and maintenance training, so your crew runs it safely from the first shift
- Remote diagnostics, tracing many faults without waiting for a site visit
- On-site technical assistance when a visit is needed
- Guaranteed spare-parts supply from Ferrara
Design, manufacturing and after-sales all sit in the same place, which has a practical consequence: the engineer who answers your call knows the machine standing in your yard. Find your nearest contact on the sales network page.
Two companion pieces deal with the financial side properly rather than with headline figures: the five levers that decide payback and buy, lease or finance lease.
A Short Checklist Before You Compare Quotes
- Material mix: car bodies, light mixed scrap, heavy structural steel, turnings or industrial offcuts?
- Volume: how many tonnes per hour at your peak, not your average?
- Output format: what bale size and density does your mill or buyer accept?
- Cut or compact: does your material need shearing, or only baling?
- Power and site: diesel or mains, fixed or mobile, how much space and what layout?
- Feeding and crew: crane, grapple or conveyor, and how many operators per shift?
- Support: who installs it, who trains your crew, and where do spare parts come from?
One thing we are asked for and do not offer is a free trial. The reasoning is set out honestly in why we don’t offer a free baler trial. What we do instead is size the machine against your material and your figures before you commit.
Request a Quote
Tell us what you process, how much of it and where. Our engineers will recommend the configuration and send you a tailored quote. Get in touch, or start from the scrap metal baler overview.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I choose the right scrap baler?
Answer three questions in order: what material you process, how many tonnes per hour you move at peak, and what bale format your buyer accepts. Those three determine the range; power, mobility and automation follow from them. Sizing against peak rather than average throughput is the single most important step.
What is the difference between a baler and a shear baler?
A baler compacts scrap into bales. A shear baler, such as the Roter RR715.6, also has a shear, so it can cut compacted material into pre-sized pieces as well as produce bales. Choose a shear baler when your buyer wants cut scrap, or when your material is too long or heavy to bale alone. The RR5/RR6 baler compacts only; it does not shear.
How many tonnes per hour can a Roter baler process?
The RR5/RR6 processes 15–20 tonnes per hour on end-of-life vehicles and 8–14 tonnes per hour on light mixed scrap. Real throughput depends on your material and feeding method, so our engineers confirm it against your scrap before quoting.
Does a scrap baler need a foundation?
The Roter RR5/RR6 does not. It requires no foundation in any configuration and can be supplied fixed, roll-on/roll-off, semi-mobile or mounted on a three-axle trailer, so there are no civil works before the first bale.
What is the difference between the RR5 and the RR6?
Box length: 5 metres on the RR5 and 6 metres on the RR6. Both run three cylinders per lid, 200 t lid force and 155 t main cylinder force, and both produce an 880 × 650 mm bale. Our engineers recommend the size based on your material and the bale format your buyer requires.
Where are Roter balers made?
Roter balers and shear balers are designed and built in Ferrara, Italy. Installation, operator training, remote diagnostics, on-site assistance and guaranteed spare-parts supply all come from the same location.