Bradford prefers Skanska for waste PFI deal
14 December 2011
Earth Tech Skanska, which has Waste Recycling Group (WRG) as operational subcontractor, has been named preferred bidder for Bradford and Calderdale’s 25-year waste disposal contract.
Councillors in Bradford at a meeting on December 13 decided to prefer the Swedish construction giant Skanska's consortium with engineering company Aecom ahead of rival bidder 3SE, a consortium involving Shanks and Scottish & Southern Energy. Earth Tech, although still in the bid name, have been acquired by Aecom with the bid lead by Skanska.
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- The facility proposed by the ETS consortium for Bowling Back Lane
The decision followed a recommendation by council officers and was also agreed by councillors in Calderdale on Monday.
The project is supported by £62.1 million in government PFI credits and will involve the treatment of around 138,000 tonnes of residual waste a year.
Treatment
Once confirmed, the scheme will see the Earth Tech Skanska (ETS) consortium, develop a multi-million pound waste treatment plant on an 8 acre council-owned site at Bowling Back Lane, Bradford. The development will comprise a ‘sophisticated’ materials recycling facility (MRF) and an on-site energy-from-waste incinerator which will have the capacity to handle 193,000 tonnes of residual waste a year.
The MRF will extract dry recyclables including cans, plastics and paper from mixed residual waste before the rest is incinerated to produce energy
Councillor Andrew Thornton, Bradford council's executive member for environment and sport, said: "This project will secure a method of managing waste from Calderdale and Bradford for the next 25 years and beyond. This will lead to an increase in recycling rates and a high level of diversion from landfill.
"It will also provide benefits in terms of creating jobs and securing investment.”
Procurement
Bradford and Calderdale councils started the procurement process for the long-term waste deal in July 2008, when 16 bidders came forward. This was whittled down to the ETS and 3SE consortiums in June 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Shanks had been proposing to build an ‘eco-deco’ mechanical biological treatment plant to bio-dry and sort out recyclables from residual waste, an anerobic digestion plant to treat the organic fraction and use of an off-site, merchant energy-from-waste facility to be developed by Scottish and Southern Energy at Ferrybridge.
The bids were assessed against evaluation criteria agreed in 2008 before the councils reached their decision. The council had noted that one disadvantage of the 3SE proposal had been the need for two separate, rather than one, planning applications and the fact that it did not include paper or card recycling.
WRG will now start consultations in preparation for the submission of a planning application for the Bowling Back Lane facility, with the contract set to be awarded next year.
Calderdale's cabinet member for economy and environment, Councillor Barry Collins, said: "This will provide a long-term solution to managing waste from Calderdale and Bradford with both economic and environmental advantages for both areas. Constantly increasing landfill tax costs and the harm inflicted on the environment by sending our waste to landfill meant that we had no choice but to come up with a sustainable alternative which was more cost-effective and environmentally friendly.”
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