“First” large municipal AD plants planned for Oxfordshire
3 March 2009
Chipping Norton-based composting firm Agrivert has announced that it has signed a 15-year contract with Oxfordshire county council to process the county's food and green waste.
And, the company plans to build new in-vessel composting (IVC) and anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities to cope with the material at a cost of £18 million.
The company is to develop two AD facilities to deal with up to 60,000 tonnes of food waste a year. Agrivert already has planning permission to develop the first facility at Cassington, north of Oxford, and another facility has been proposed at Crowmarsh Gifford, which is between Oxford and Reading.
The two AD facilities are set to generate enough electricity to power 5,000 homes and there are also plans to use the heat created during the process to dry waste woodchip and generate biomass fuel.
Agrivert's sales and marketing director, Harry Waters, claimed that the facilities would be the first large-scale AD facilities to be purpose-built for a local authority. He told letsrecycle.com: "The most exciting thing for us is that it is AD and it is going to be one of the first large-scale AD projects."
Mr Waters acknowledged that there are other AD facilities that process waste from councils, such as GreenfinchBiogen, in Shropshire, and the Holsworthy Biogas facility, in Devon, but said that the new facilities would be the first to be specifically built for a council on a large-scale.
And, he said he was particularly pleased to get funding for the new facilities and get the contact signed as finalising contracts was particularly difficult at the moment due to the economic climate.
In addition to the new AD plants, an IVC facility will also be built to take both green and food waste from the council. This is due to take 35,000 tonnes of material per year and Agrivert have permission to build the facility at a site in Ardley, north of Oxford.
Agrivert intends to have all of the facilities up-and-running by 2011, and Mr Waters said that the Ardley IVC would be operational by December this year and predicted that the Cassington facility would be taking waste by September 2010.
Track record
Commenting on the deal, which begins in June 2009, councillor Roger Belson, Oxfordshire county council's cabinet member for sustainable development, said: "We want to recycle more and more. Oxfordshire has a great track record for recycling but at the moment all food waste from the fridges, cupboards and dining tables of our residents has to go in the bin. That will all end when the first food waste processors come in to operation.
He added: "The introduction of food waste processing is a crucial part of the waste management strategy in Oxfordshire to reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill as much as possible. Our first priority is to reduce waste, then to recycle and compost as much as possible before disposing of it."
Collections
Oxfordshire county council has said that, as district councils collect waste, it is up to them to decide when food waste collections begin. South Oxfordshire district council is set to be the first with collections due to start in the middle of the year, while other districts are expected to introduce separate food waste collection in late 2009 and 2010.
Related links
Food waste will initially be transferred out of the county while work is underway on Oxfordshire facilities.
Agrivert is also planning to set up four new green waste processing facilities, at undisclosed locations, to process up to 57,000 tonnes a year of green waste.
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