UK Wood Recycling opened its £8 million facility near Redcar on Friday, which will provide around 80,000 tonnes of recycled woodchip each year to the nearby Wilton 10 power plant on Teesside.
 /photos/ukwoodrecycling2.jpgOpening (left to right): Vera Baird, MP for Redcar and Cleveland, UK Wood Recycling managing director Geoff Hadfield and Lord Truscott opening the new wood recycling facility |
Launched by Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Lord Truscott and local MP Vera Baird, the facility was also welcomed by Rick Wilcox, secretary of the Wood Recycler’s Association – who hailed the opening as an important day for wood recycling.
Addressing guests, Mr Wilcox said: “This is a great day for recycling and renewable energy. Co-incidentally the opening has fallen in the same week as the budget which has seen a significant rise in landfill tax which should stimulate the recycling of waste wood into heat and power and divert more waste wood from landfill.”
Cutting a ribbon to open the facility, Lord Truscott said: “This project is an example of exactly what our country should be doing – improving our energy efficiency and tackling climate change by creating renewable energy.”
Technology
At the UK Wood Recycling site, which has already stockpiled 30,000 tonnes of waste wood since last July (see letsrecycle.com story), waste wood is loaded into hammer mills, shredded and de-contaminated using magnet and air technology designed by the company.
The waste wood is sourced from local authorities, waste firms, furniture manufacturers and packaging companies and is tested by UK Wood Recycling to ensure it meets the chemical specification needed for the biomass plant.
Expected to be operational in July, the Wilton 10 plant run by SembCorp Utilities UK will require around 300,000 tonnes of wood as fuel every year in total. About 40% of this will come from recycled wood, while the remained will come from forestry management schemes, sawmills and specially-grown energy crops.
The power plant will generate 30MW of electricity, enough to fuel 30,000 homes.
Geoff Hadfield, managing director of UK Wood Recycling, a sister firm of Manchester-based Hadfield Wood Recyclers, said: “UKWR is a major step forward for renewable energy in terms of using wood waste to generate electricity. This is a first for us but we hope there will be many more such schemes replicated around the country. There are less than a handful of biomass plants in the UK and over 300 in Germany which gives a sense of what is to come.”
 /photos/woodchippiles.jpgUK Wood Recycling has already stockpiled 30,000 tonnes of wood ready for the Wilton 10 plant to start up in July |
Market
Hadfields now sends just 25% of its recycled wood for use in the panelboard industry – having in the past sent all of its wood to that market.
Mr Hadfield said the current surplus of waste wood in the panelboard market (see letsrecycle.com story) and the forthcoming increases in Landfill Tax was providing a good opportunity for biomass outlets for wood.
“This is a golden opportunity for our own business and the biomass industry in general,” he said.
Toby Beadle, a consultant who helped SembCorp Utilities UK to get its biomass project off the ground, added: “This is an extremely important event for the whole sector as it brings to the attention of the government that this is real – you can build big biomass projects and you can get the fuel. A lot of potential developers are waiting for this to work before they give the go-ahead and it will open the tap when it does.”
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