The deal involves the design, build and operation of a £200 million facility to treat up to 270,000 tonnes-a-year of residual municipal waste, with the aim of having the plant up-and-running by 2015.
We feel we have a strong list of potential companies and consortia to work with and look forward to receiving their outline submissions in September
Councillor Derrick Ashley
The six contenders for the contract, which received £115.3 million in PFI funding in March 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story), are:
• US-based energy-from-waste specialists Covanta Energy Ltd;
• Energy company E.ON Energy from Waste EG (EEW);
• German energy-from-waste company MVV Umwelt GmBH;
• a consortium between UK waste management company Shanks and US EfW specialists Wheelabrator;
• Waste and recycling company SITA UK;
• and, waste management firm Veolia ES Aurora
While the council has stressed that it has currently not decided what technology to use for the deal, its PFI application featured energy-from-waste (EfW) as its reference technology, and the shortlist is dominated by firms specialising in EfW.
Commenting on the shortlist, the council's executive member for waste, councillor Derrick Ashley, said: “Despite excellent recycling efforts around the county, there is still non-recyclable waste that currently goes to landfill. While we are only in the early days of deciding how we will deal with this residual waste in the future, we are pleased that so many bidders have shown interest at this initial stage.
“We feel we have a strong list of potential companies and consortia to work with and look forward to receiving their outline submissions in September,” he added.
The council has said that it expects to narrow down the shortlist to three or four bidders in September 2009, before asking the remaining contenders to submit a detailed proposal including potential sites and technologies.
As well as a reference technology, the PFI application also identified a council-owned site at New Barnfield as a potential location for the project, and the council began an environmental impact assessment on the site in April 2009.
Decision
However, Cllr Ashley stressed that the final decision of both site and technology would be made under the procurement process.
“As we have said before, although we had to identify a reference site and a reference technology for a waste treatment facility in order to secure government funding, the successful bidder may well have completely different suggestions.
“We will not make a final decision about which company we will appoint until 2011.”
He added: “Any proposals put forward at that time by the successful bidder will go through a stringent planning process and will include extensive public consultation.”
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