Cheshire councils set 847m waste PFI ceiling

The councils said the agreement of an 'affordability ceiling' for the money they would spend over the course of the 25-year deal now paved the way for them to announce the identity of the preferred bidder for the contract in October 2010.

The contract is set to be awarded to one of two remaining contenders, waste company Viridor and a consortium between utilities company United Utilities and services firm Interserve, known as Resource Recovery Solutions, and is expected to involve dealing with around 155,000 tonnes of residual waste a year.

However, the local authorities stressed that, while the figure was based on the projected costs of alternatively sending that amount of waste to landfill, the actual amount they would pay to the contractor would be based on the tonnage of waste delivered under the contract.

They also emphasised that it relied on the project receiving over £100 million of PFI credits from Defra, with £40 million having been initially allocated by the department in June 2005 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Commenting on the importance of the procurement, Steve Kent, community and environment director for Cheshire West and Chester council, said: “Despite the great strides we have made with recycling, we still sent 190,000 tonnes of waste to landfill last year. And even if we achieve our ambitious future recycling targets, we would still be sending 155,000 tonnes of landfill annually.

“Declining landfill space and increasing costs, an average of £800,000 each year, mean that doing nothing is definitely not an option – certainly no one that will be appreciated by future generations,” he added.

Technology

Of the two remaining bidders for the contract, Viridor's proposal is focused on building a mechanical biological treatment (MBT) facility at the former Ineos chemical works at Griffiths Road in Northwich.

The plant would be used to recover recyclates from residual waste and would then produce a solid recovered fuel from the remainder, which would then be transported by rail to the combined heat and power plant being built at Ineos Chlor's Runcorn facility which is already earmarked to deal with waste from Viridor-Laing's Greater Manchester waste PFI (see letsrecycle.com story).

Meanwhile, the Resource Recovery Solutions consortium is proposing to build a waste treatment plant at New Cheshire Business Park in Wincham, using gasification technology to generate energy from the county's residual waste.

Planning applications for both that facility and the Viridor MBT plant are scheduled to be considered by Cheshire West and Chester's strategic planning committee on June 17.