Geminor to transport RDF from Guernsey to Sweden

Geminor was selected following a competitive tender process and has proposed to export the waste as refuse derived fuel (RDF) to an energy from waste facility at Jonkoping in Southern Sweden – the 160,000 tonnes-per-year Torsvik plant.

Producing RDF for export will replace the island’s long reliance on landfill to dispose of thousands of tonnes of waste local households and businesses produce every year. During the tendering process, proposals had also been put forward that involved sending the waste for a treatment at an EfW plant on Jersey.

States of Guernsey claimed that Geminor’s bid was the cheapest and most energy efficient, due to its proposal to use a plant producing electricity and providing district heating.

A planning application has been submitted for a waste transfer station at Longue Hougue, to handle the waste, which is expected to cost around £30 million. The transfer station will receive household ‘black bag’ waste as well as commercial waste which will go through a mechanical shredding process, before undergoing magnetic separation to remove metals for recycling.

Shipment

The remaining material will then be formed into cube-shaped bales, approximately one metre high, and wrapped in plastic film. Around three or four shipments of RDF will be transported daily via an existing freight link to Portsmouth.

The material will then move to Tilbury, for onward transport to Sweden. Geminor has a contract with one of Sweden’s largest paper producers, which has dedicated vessels delivering products to the UK every week. RDF from Guernsey will be sent in the opposite direction, after the ships have delivered their original cargo.

Guernsey’s Public Services Minister, deputy Scott Ogier, “For the last 18 months we have been working with the companies bidding to design and operate the on-island elements. We have identified the requirements for all the proposed new facilities at Longue Hougue, and in December we submitted a planning application for those.”

He added: “Geminor is one of Europe’s leading RDF exporters, and already deals with nearly half a million tonnes a year from the UK and Ireland. They have the expertise we require, and we will benefit from their established transport and logistics network. They also have contracts with dozens of processing facilities, which provides excellent resilience for the island.

“The final piece of the jigsaw is the operating contracts for the on-island facilities, and we hope to complete those negotiations in the coming weeks. We will shortly hand over responsibility for implementing the waste strategy to the new States Trading Supervisory Board, and they will be in a good position.”

Geminor UK is part of the Geminor Group, which has headquarters in Norway and operations in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Finland. In 2015, it managed 435,000 tonnes of RDF exported from UK and Ireland for energy recovery.