Waste management firm Biffa has delayed the full opening of its large-scale mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant at Brookhurst Wood, West Sussex until March 2014.
Biffas facility, which will have the capacity to process 327,000 tonnes of residual waste per year, has been developed under a 25-year waste treatment contract it holds with West Sussex county council. Officially described as a Materials Resource Management Contract, the county signed the deal with Biffa West Sussex Ltd in July 2010.
At the start of 2013, Mike Thair, director of Biffa West Sussex told the Brookhurst liaison group that the MBT facility was expected to be fully operational by the summer. But, the start date for operations at the facility has now been postponed until March 2014, West Sussex county council has told letsrecycle.com.
The plant has been built adjacent to the waste management firms existing Brookhurst Wood landfill site near Horsham – the landfill is projected to run out of capacity by 2015/16 (see letsrecycle.com story).
At a meeting of the liaison group in July, Mr Thair revealed that while hot commissioning had started in June, full operation would not be until the first or second week of November. He added that the commissioning focus was shifting from throughput towards refinement of waste streams and outputs.
Commissioning
The company has confirmed that construction and cold commissioning are now complete, with hot commissioning and the recruitment of new staff still underway. But, Biffa has faced some difficulties on the recruitment side, especially in finding staff with specific supervisory and data skills.
A spokesman for West Sussex county council told letsrecycle.com that poor weather and problems with the programming of the site have delayed the start date until the spring 2014.
He added: These are the sort of problems you can expect with any development of this size.
Waste from the county is currently being landfilled with some material sent for energy recovery.
‘Our visitors from CSES were very impressed with Biffas waste management expertise and state-of-the-art technology, and in turn we were fascinated to hear about waste management developments in China.’
– Dr John Casey, managing director of Biffa Energy and Engineering Division
Last month, Biffa hosted a visit of the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences to look at the technology at the Brookhurst MBT plant, which was organised by the Environmental Industries Commission.
Commenting on the visit, Dr John Casey, managing director of Biffa Energy and Engineering Division said: It was a real privilege to be able to demonstrate the highest standards of British engineering and environmental management at our Brookhurst MBT facility.
Our visitors from CSES were very impressed with Biffas waste management expertise and state-of-the-art technology, and in turn we were fascinated to hear about waste management developments in China.
RDF contract
West Sussex council is also planning to award an energy from waste contract for the treatment of RDF treatment produced by the MBT facility. The procurement, which has been narrowed down to five bidders including Biffa, was delayed in July 2013 after Ernst & Young was forced to pull out of the process as financial advisor.
The assurance specialist, which had been selected to check the financial stability of the project and analyse the bids, had also been commissioned as the councils auditor and so could no longer be involved due to a potential conflict of interests.
Grant Thornton has replaced Ernst & Young with the RDF contract due to be awarded in May 2014.
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