The company has been awarded the deal for an undisclosed sum by Veolia Environmental Services Ltd, which has held the contract to manage all of Hampshires municipal waste since 1995.
A spokesman for Eco told letsrecycle.com that the company had been handling Veolias wood for a couple years and processing it at its main site at Parley in Dorset.
However under the new arrangement, Eco is expected to process material at its new bespoke one-acre site at the Port of Southampton. The Southampton site was opened to reduce road miles as waste was coming from Hampshire, being processed in Dorset and then going back to Hampshire and is expected to save over 2,000,000 miles of haulage per annum.
The site is Ecos third, after its Parley operation and a satellite site in Weymouth which was opened in 2009 to service a long term contract with Dorset county Council. Four new jobs have been created with the opening of the new site which operates 20 hours a day.
Sweden
The Hampshire contract will see Eco handling 80,000 tonnes of waste wood at its Southampton site. Of this, 60,000 tonnes will be shipped overseas to fuel power stations in Sweden.
The remaining 20,000 tonnes of clean wood will be used for animal bedding and as fuel for biomass plants in the UK. Eco is working in partnership with port cargo handling operator Solent Stevedores.
Peter Hardy, Ecos commercial manager, said: This is a significant expansion for Eco. It builds on the success of our existing partnership with Solent Stevedores which has seen thousands of tonnes of waste wood diverted from landfill into more productive use, such as fuel and animal bedding.
Related Links
Eco Sustainable Solutions processes 150,000 tonnes of organic waste a year. End products include turf, enriched topsoil, compost and woodchip. The company, which was founded in 1994, employs 45 staff and has more than doubled annual turnover in the last five years to the current 8 million.
Subscribe for free