The £160 million waste wood biomass plant was initially due to be operational in early 2018 but was hit by delays.
Glennmont told letsrecycle.com in January it was hopeful a positive outcome could be found for the Stockton-on-Tees-based facility(see letsrecycle.com story), but it now says the coronavirus pandemic has caused further problems .
In April 2019, the plant was ‘mothballed’ as its main contractors Babcock & Wilcox Volund reached a settlement with Glenmont to exit the site, and the fund manager pledged to find a ‘solution’ for the project.
In a statement given to letsrecycle.com this morning (18 August), a spokesperson for Glennmont said: “The team at Glennmont are still working on securing a positive solution for Port Clarence. Covid lockdown hasn’t helped.”
Construction
Construction of the facility began in 2015 and around 40 people were employed on the site (see letsrecycle.com story). This rose to around 300 employed during peak construction.
Situated on the banks of the River Tees at Clarence Works, the facility secured planning permission from Stockton-on-Tees borough council in 2014 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Funding was provided by Glenmont Partners with debt arranged and provided by Deutsche Bank and Danske Bank, supported by EKF, the export credit agency of Denmark.
If it goes ahead, the plant will generate 40MW of energy per year. It was initially set to benefit from subsidies from the Renewable Obligation Certificates scheme but missed the September 2018 deadline to enter commissioning.
Supply
Biomass fuel company Stobart Energy won a contract to supply the plant with 250,000 tonnes of waste wood in 2015 (see letsrecycle.com story).
When the deal was announced, it was said that the company would begin supplying wood from both commercial and local authority sources from late 2017, with around 3.5 million tonnes of material sent to Port Clarence during the lifetime of the contract.
Murray Paterson, who was then UK biomass manager at Glennmont Partners, said the plant would divert waste wood which otherwise would have been sent to landfill.
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