The arrangement will enable Grundon to utilise a sixth of the 300,000 tonne-per-year capacity plant, which has been developed by Viridor at a cost of £250 million.
The facility, which officially opened in June, is part of a 25-year contract signed between Viridor and Oxfordshire county council in 2011 to treat residual waste from the region. At present, Oxfordshire sends around 150,000 tonnes of refuse to the plant each year.
Ardley is also capable of producing 26MW of electricity to the National Grid each year, enough to power around 38,000 homes.
Grundon’s capacity arrangement will run alongside the lifetime of the Oxfordshire contract, providing the waste firm with an alternative treatment option for waste from its commercial customers in the south of England.
Lakeside
The Ardley agreement is not the first between the two companies. The 410,000 tonnes-per-year capacity Lakeside EfW plant near Slough opened as a joint venture between Grundon and Viridor opened in 2010, accepting residual waste from councils in Wiltshire, Dorset and the West London Waste Authority.
While Grundon confirmed operations will continue as normal at Lakeside, the future of the site was recently brought into question following a recommendation by the Airports Commission to move the facility in order to make room for a third runway at Heathrow (see letsrecycle.com story).
Clayton Sullivan-Webb, managing director of Grundon, said that the location of the Ardley plant in Oxfordshire ‘compliments’ the existing Lakeside facility, giving its customers wider access to facilities in the South East via the partnership’s collection fleet.
He said: “We are delighted to have signed this agreement with Viridor. Ardley’s location in the heart of our Thames Valley homeland perfectly complements the existing Lakeside Energy from Waste facility at Colnbrook – a joint venture between Grundon Waste Management and Viridor – and underlines our commitment to giving commercial customers access to the best possible locally-based facilities.
Priority
“Diverting waste from landfill and converting it into valuable renewable energy is a top priority for Grundon. Having secured this significant capacity over a long-term period, we can now expand our energy from waste and energy recovery services to many more customers across the wider region, providing them with a much more sustainable solution for the management of their waste.”
Derek Edwards, South East regional director for Viridor, added: “Our state-of-the-art energy plant in Ardley is already doing that to residual waste from Oxfordshire’s homes and this contract with Grundon will see businesses in the area also benefiting from our partnership work as their established collection fleet brings fuel for our plant for some years to come.”
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