Partner Article

North East firm provides groundwork for £80m biofuels plant

A North East company has won a contract on an £80m biofuel facility that will turn food waste and packaging into energy. The plant will divert up to 180,000 tonnes of waste away from landfill and generate around 24MW of green electricity for the National Grid - enough to power 37,000 homes a year.

It is being developed at a former rail decommissioning building in North-East Lincolnshire, and is the first of ten regional waste-to-energy sites in the UK planned by the EnCycle initiative.

Structural experts from AMP Consultants, of Darlington, have been appointed to carry out static load tests of the existing foundations to ensure they are suitable for the site’s new use. The consultancy was approached to carry out the study by the site’s owner, Peter Dibdin, after it provided structural designs for numerous developments in the UK for his logistics operations that are now part of the Innov@te Logistics group.

David Hodgson, AMP Managing Director said: “EnCycle hopes to build ten regional power stations over the next five years and, in doing so, divert 1.5 million tonnes of waste from landfill. It is a very exciting project and, having been involved in laying the ground, so to speak, for the first plant, we hope it will now lead to long-term association with EnCycle and the development of biofuel-based energy.”

Construction of the Immingham plant is expected to take a year, but Encycle has already secured contracts with food manufacturing companies Greencore, Northern Foods and high street bakery Greggs, to take their food waste and non-recyclable packaging.

The technology will take the food waste and packaging and treat it in enclosed chambers. This will remove all the moisture from the waste and break it down into small particles similar to coffee granules. It will then be vaporised in a gas conversion process.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .