Cllr Tony Kershaw, cabinet member for waste
The companies now competing for the deal are: Birmingham-based waste management firm Biffa; French-owned waste management company Veolia Environmental Services and a consortium of Warrington-based utilities firm United Utilities and equity investment firm John Laing Investments.
The deal, which is backed by £86.6 million in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding, covers the treatment of up to 180,000 tonnes of residual waste each year by 2040.
The bidders have been chosen from a shortlist of eight announced in January (see letsrecycle.com story) and will now be asked to produce detailed proposals by December this year explaining treatment options for waste remaining after recycling and composting has taken place, from 2015 onwards.
Tony Kershaw, cabinet member for waste at Leicestershire, said: “The shortlisted bidders are experienced companies and I am pleased we are working with them to deliver a new facility in Leicestershire. Through recycling and composting, we are already diverting 167,000 tonnes of material away from landfill – this project will help to cut the amount further.”
EfW
Leicestershire county council used energy-from-waste with combined heat and power as the reference technology for its successful bid for governemnt funding in October 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story) but has since said that it would entertain proposals to develop autoclave, gasification, mechanical biological treatment and pyrolsis technology.
In addition, the council has said it is not insistent on the successful bidder using the council-owned sites at Whetstone or at the Interlink Business Park in Bardon.
Mr Kershaw added: “We want to find the best solution to treat waste but we are only part of the way through the process and we've made no decision on the technology and no decision on a site.”
The council is hopeful of awarding the contract to a successful bidder in late 2010 and plans to have the treatment facility operational by 2015.
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