Electricity revenue boosts Viridor’s results in 2021/22

The company published the figures within its environmental, social and governance (ESG) report for 2022 today (5 October).

In the report, Viridor said the results were “in line with expectations” after improvements in the operational and commercial performance of its energy from waste (EfW) facilities, as well as a full year of trading from the Avonmouth Resource Recovery and Recycling Centre (see letsrecycle.com story).

“Positive macroeconomic tailwinds”, particularly in relation to unhedged electricity revenues, also boosted revenues, the report says.

Viridor says 2021/22 saw the company move to a “core focus” on energy recovery and plastics recycling and divest its non-core waste operations. This included the sale of its collections business, its landfill business and “certain recycling contracts and assets”.

Viridor’s earnings before interest and tax grew from £171 million to £222 million in 2021/22.

The report shows that £220 million of Viridor’s earnings stemmed from its energy business in 2021/22, up from £91.5 million the year before. However, the report notes that, since Viridor only consolidated its energy operations into a single group this year, the previous year’s results include “only part of prior year performance for some sites”.

‘A seismic year’

In May 2021, Viridor committed to becoming a net zero business by 2040 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Commenting on the results, Kevin Bradshaw, Viridor’s CEO, said: “For Viridor, it was a seismic year, as we continued to operate an essential service throughout lockdown while also carrying out a major strategic review and subsequently divesting and restructuring our business.

“Having successfully completed this year of transformational change, with ESG now central to everything we do, Viridor is set for the future.”

2021/22

Amongst the company’s highlights from 2021/22, last October Viridor unveiled plans to capture around 900,000 of CO₂ a year at the company’s Runcorn facility in Cheshire, the largest EfW facility in the UK (see letsrecycle.com story).

Viridor called on the government to ban plastic exports from the UK in December 2021 (see letsrecycle.com story). It also pledged to reduce its own exports of plastic waste by 90%.

And, also last year, Viridor officially opened the £252 million Avonmouth Resource Recovery and Recycling Centre near Bristol. The facility comprises a 300,000 tonnes per year capacity EfW plant and 80,000 tonnes per year capacity plastics reprocessing plant. Viridor claims diverting this amount of plastic from the EfW waste stream saves 151,000 tonnes of CO₂ each year.

Related link
Viridor ESG Report: Financial year 2022