Under the contract, FCC Environment will continue to manage the council’s Kirkless transfer station in Ince as well as the borough’s three household waste and recycling centres (HWRCs) in Atherton, Ince and Leigh.
In addition, FCC Environment will redevelop the HWRCs to “improve the customer experience” and capture a greater range of materials, the firm said.
Meanwhile, the Kirkless transfer station will also be improved in order to “maximise recycling opportunities” and to process household waste into a refuse derived fuel (RDF), which the company said would be sent for energy recovery at UK-based power plants.
One possible destination for the RDF is likely to be Ferrybridge Multifuel Energy Ltd’s £300 million energy-from-waste (EfW) plant in West Yorkshire, for which FCC already has several long-term deals to send RDF.
The Multifuel facility a joint venture between renewable energy and gas supplier SSE Plc and EfW firm Wheelabrator Technologies Inc is being developed at the site of the SSE Ferrybridge power station. It will have the capacity to process 500,000 tonnes of material per year when it becomes operational in summer 2015.
Success
FCC Environment’s success in winning the contract with Wigan was first revealed by letsrecycle.com in May 2014 (see letsrecycle.com story). The firm beat off competition from Viridor to secure the deal.
The current residual waste and HWRC contract with Wigan was awarded in 2000 to Waste Recycling Group, a firm which was subsequently acquired by Spanish-owned FCC Environment in 2006 for 1.4 billion to form FCC in the UK.
The new deal signed today with FCC Environment will commence when the current contract ends in March next year.
At present the majority of the council’s waste is sent to FCC Environment’s RDF and waste transfer facility at Kirkless in the borough. FCC Environment has an RDF baling plant at Kirkless where a variety of waste is shredded for RDF usage including bulky waste from HWRCs.
Signing the deal at the RWM exhibition at the Birmingham NEC today, FCC Environment’s group development director Richard Belfield said: “This is an extremely important contract for us. It is a strengthening contract – it renews a strong relationship that we have had with the council for many years. We are not here today and gone tomorrow, we are here for the long term.”
Mr Belfield said the deal was also good for the community and residents in Wigan as it would see investment in recycling centres in the borough.
He added: “We had to fight for it in the tender process, but the procurement was clear and very smooth. It is easy to say that relationships are important but this proves that they really are.”
Landfill
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Wigan council said it has been working on a new waste programme for the last five years as sending waste to landfill is becoming “increasingly expensive”.
As part of this programme, the council said it intends to continue recycling more than 50% of its waste while recovering another 40% through energy recovery. However, the remaining 10% of Wigan’s waste will still be sent to landfill.
Also speaking at the AMEC stand at the RWM exhibition to officially sign the contract, Wigan council’s director for the environment, Terry Dunn, commented: “We have worked with FCC for 14 or 15 years and it has given us confidence and a true understanding with the same ambitions and aims.
“This deal is cost effective for us and supports what we are trying to achieve – it is great for Wigan and the partnership with FCC goes from strength to strength.”
At a ceremony to mark the contract award at Wigan town hall yesterday (September 16), leader of Wigan council Lord Peter Smith said: “When evaluating the different bids we felt that FCC Environment shared our ambition to maximise recycling and composting, while diverting as much waste as possible from landfill. They also represented the best value for money – which will help us to lower our annual revenue expenditure on dealing with municipal waste.”
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