PDM Group expands into food waste recycling

And, the company has ambitions to develop a £50 million facility on the River Thames in the next few years.

The company is also now expanding its existing operations to take mixed food waste. It already operates five rendering plants in the UK, and will be using combustion technology to burn food waste, using it in place of fossil fuels for the generation of renewable energy.

PDM's site at Widnes, Cheshire, which renders 4,000 tonnes of meat wastes  each week,  will be able to process around 1,500 tonnes a week of food waste; and another of PDM's plants, at Wymington, Northampton, will have extra capacity to process 3,000 tonnes of food waste per week.

The new plants will expand the company's treatment capacity even further.

Speaking to letsrecycle.com yesterday, Philip Simpson, commercial services director at PDM said: “Introducing mixed food waste is an extension of our core business activity. For over 80 years we have been recycling by-products from meat industry and adding value to the meat chain. Now we will be doing the same for food waste as the increase in landfill tax has made processing food waste more economical.”

PDM is looking to form food waste contracts with local authorities for all its sites but does not have any contracts in place yet, Mr Simpson said that they did have contracts with a number of “major retailers” but could not name them individually.

New sites

As for the new sites, Mr Simpson said: “We have acquired planning permission for a combustion plant in Nuneaton which will burn the equivalent of 10,000 tonnes a week and we are also pursuing a food, meat and oil processing site in London on the banks of river Thames. We are currently engaging with the GLA and regulatory authorities to see how our integrated energy rendering and bio diesel facility can help local boroughs. We are also looking to use the wharf for transportation of the goods.

PDM Group already have a rendering plant in London which processes 3,000 tonnes of meat waste a week but the combustion plant will mean PDM will be able to accept an additional 5-10,000 tonnes of food waste a week, depending on the moisture content of the food, as water does not burn.

Locating a new facility in London makes sense in terms of supply chain – to be where raw material produced and consumed.”

If PDM achieves planning permission for the London facility Mr Simpson predicts that the site will be up and running in two and a half years with the Nuneaton site operational within two.

Once the planning permission for the London site has been achieve, PDM will have a total of four combustion plants and five rendering plants.

Process

PDM is already processing unsold food from retailers in their packaging using a renewable energy combustion process.

For packaged food waste, PDM has a mechanical separation system to separate the food from the packaging.

At the moment this is going to landfill, however the company is looking at systems to sterilise and clean the packaging so it can be recycled. And Mr Simpson said that PDM is talking to the plastic recycling market to try and come to an agreement.

The residue from the process is inert ash and PDM is also looking at developing a market for this to be used in concrete.

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