And, Gloucestershire county council has also moved forward with the procurement of its own major waste contract, narrowing the shortlist of bidders for its £646 million PFI-funded residual waste treatment deal from 10 to just four, and also naming the technologies it expects to use.
The bidders for the contract, which is thought to be worth up to £60 million and will run for between 17 and 33 years, are:
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Kier – a Bedfordshire-based civil engineering company;
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Shanks Group – the waste management company based in Milton Keynes;
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Viridor- the Taunton-based waste and recycling company.
Peterborough city council secured planning permission for the EfW project in November 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story), with the development set to see the MRF move an adjoining site on the city's Fengate Industrial Estate.
The council has already been given the planning go-ahead to develop the new MRF, which will have a 100,000 tonne-a-year capacity (see letsrecycle.com story).
Today, it also named the three bidders for a deal to design, build and operate the plant under a deal lasting between six and 31 years, including:
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Greenstar – the Irish-owned MRF operator;
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Shanks Group;
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Viridor.
In the third deal, six companies are contending for a contract lasting between a minimum of nine years and a maximum of 30 years, to run the council's waste and recycling collections, as well as street cleansing, grounds maintenance and other operational services.
The contenders for the contract, which is currently run in-house by Peterborough City Services, are:
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Amey LG – an Oxford-based services company;
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Enterprise Managed Services – a support-service firm operating nationwide;
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HW Martin Waste – Derbyshire-based waste management company;
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Kier;
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May Gurney – infrastructure services company, with headquarters in Norwich;
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Veolia ES (UK) – waste management company, which has UK headquarters in London.
A spokesman for the council noted that the exact value of this deal would depend on exactly what aspects of the services the successful bidder was willing to take on, though the majority of the operations had been identified as core services to be included.
Next steps
The next steps for the procurement processes will involve all the bidders being invited to engage with the city council in the first stage of the competitive dialogue processes which will involve discussing their proposed solutions.
In a document issued for an open day held for potential bidders in May 2009, the council said that it hoped to have the MRF up-and-running by 2012 and the EfW operational by 2014.
The council has said that it aims to finance the deal by avenues other than PFI, and in particular will explore “prudential borrowing with equity share opportunities”.
Prudential borrowing involves securing finance with a loan from the Treasury-backed Public Works Loan Board, and can be used both alongside, and instead of PFI funding.
Gloucestershire
Meanwhile, Gloucestershire county council's cabinet last month approved the reduction of the shortlist of bidders for its 25-year residual waste treatment deal, which was awarded £92 million in PFI credits in November 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story).
The council has originally named 10 contenders for the deal, which will involve diverting between 150,000 and 170,000 tonnes of residual waste from landfill a year, in July 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story), but just four are now left in the running.
These are:
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Complete Circle – a consortium between equity investors John Laing, technology provider Keppel Seghers, and United Utilities;
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Cory Environmental Management – the London-based waste management company;
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Urbaser – Spanish waste treatment company;
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Viridor.
Alongside the shortlist, the council revealed that the technologies proposed by the remaining bidders were mechanical biological treatment (MBT) and incineration.
Commenting on the progress made, the council's cabinet member for waste, councillor Stan Waddington, said: “This sees the numbers of companies bidding to dispose of Gloucestershire's waste reduced from 10 to four. Whilst we aren't allowed to go into detail about the bids at this stage, I can say that they propose a variety of technologies, including different types of MBT as well as energy from waste.”
“Whilst all the bids use Javelin Park for parts of the process, in some cases final processing takes place outside Gloucestershire. Now these companies need to work up the details of exactly what they are proposing.”
The council said that the bidders would be asked to submit detailed plans by late spring 2010, and it aims to award the contract in spring 2011.
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