The London Waste and Recycling Board has today (April 5) awarded a 4 million loan to Orchid Environmental to develop a waste-to-fuel plant at Bexley in South East London.
The Merseyside-based company is intending to develop the 160,000 tonne-a-year capacity plant in the same vein as its existing Huyton facility, which opened in April 2008.
The facility is based around mechanical heat treatment, which involves steam being used to separate recyclable material from residual waste, leaving a solid recovered fuel (SRF).
Once operational, the Bexley plant is expected to be used to treat household and business waste. The SRF produced can be used in renewable energy plants and by industrial heat users.
Commenting on the proposal, Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: This project is a fantastic example of the green economy in action, transforming London’s rubbish into energy and creating new, permanent jobs.
Steve Whatmore, managing director of Orchid Environmental, added: We welcome LWaRB’s [London Waste and Recycling Board] fantastic demonstration of support for Orchids planned London facility and the recognition of the positive contribution this third Orchid merchant plant will make to London’s carbon agenda.
The Bexley plant is planned to become operational in early 2013 and will be situated in the industrial area of Belvedere, which is also home to Cory Environmentals large-scale energy-from-waste facility. Although it is unclear at this stage whether Cory will seek to use SRF produced by Orchid.
Board
The London Waste and Recycling Board, which was established in September 2008 as a statutory body to provide a strategic steer for waste and recycling in the capital, made the decision to loan Orchid the money at its last meeting for the financial year.
And, the decision makes Orchid the fourth large-scale waste infrastructure project that LWaRB has issued financial support to as part of its 73.4 million funding pot.
Chair of the London Waste and Recycling Board, James Cleverly, said: Orchids low carbon fuel production plant turns those resources into something useful. This not only reduces our reliance on fossil fuel sources, it will also create green jobs for the capital and divert up to 160,000 tonnes rubbish from entering the waste stream.
In addition to the loan for Orchid, the Board also opted to place Dagenham-based Closed Loop Recycling in its Infrastructure Pool, which is designed to house projects which will become eligible for funding once they have sufficiently developed treatment capacity.
Closed Loop is seeking funding support to install a plastic recovery facility at the existing plant in order to increase its sorting capability by 25,000 tonnes-a-year.
Subscribe for free