The Oxfordshire company says this is the first UK site to achieve European Union ABP accreditation. The permission was awarded last month to a site in the North of England that uses OrrTec's Vertical Composting Unit (VCU) technology.
The Animal By-Products Regulations were brought into the UK following the foot and mouth farming crisis of 2001. They are intended to put tight controls on the disposal of all animal by-products, especially operations such as composting which see the end product spread on open land.
 One of OrrTec's 4-chamber VCU100 models, processing around 5,250 tonnes a year of ABP material in Ireland |
Regulations
Technical director Matt Pumfrey explained that in order to get draft accreditation, companies must prove their operations will comply with the Animal By-Products Regulations by designing equipment appropriately and using Hazardous and Critical Control Point analysis.
Mr Pumfrey said: “Probably about six companies have draft accreditation. Then you starting taking ABPS onto the site and DEFRA monitors your site, taking temperatures throughout the system to ensure everything is over 70 degrees C every day for a month. They also take a number of samples to ensure you meet European standards for pathogen destruction.
“Once you've done that, you become accredited and that's what we have done.” Composted material from OrrTec's system can now be spread on agricultural land, Mr Pumfrey said.
The owners of the site – in the North of England – are reluctant to reveal their name for fear of competition. They can now take in ABPs commercially and mix them with green waste, source separated domestic waste and wood waste to make BSI 100 standard compost, Mr Pumfrey said.
Retailed
The next step for the site is to comply with DEFRA's two-month further monitoring period while any operational changes are made before final ABPR accreditation is awarded, allowing the compost to be retailed.
Mr Pumfrey said the site would process about 5,000 tonnes a year but its owners were looking to more than double that by the end of 2004. he said it would cost about 20-25 per tonne to run the site and pay off the capital costs over seven years. He added the typical cost to get an Orr-Tec site processing 15,000 tonnes a year up and running would be about 900,000.
A spokesman for OrrTec said: “This site was the first in the UK to work through developing suitable in-vessel composting HACCP plans and site designs with DEFRA.” OrrTec uses technology developed with New Zealand company VCU Technology. It has supplied seven other sites around the UK and will install another in Ireland to process fish wastes in the next few months.
Subscribe for free