May Gurney has emerged as frontrunner to run Bristol city councils waste and recycling collections, after being named last week (July 1) as preferred bidder for the local authoritys waste services contract, worth up to 238 million.
The Norwich-based services company is poised to begin running the service at the start of November 2011, when it would take over from SITA UK, who have been running the citys waste and recycling collections since 2001 (see letsrecycle.com story).
The council said May Gurney has been chosen following an 18 month procurement process which involved a number of high quality bidders and thorough negotiation and evaluation.
The choice of May Gurney is currently subject to the 10 day Alcatel legal period, which prevents either Bristol or May Gurney providing further details of what, if any, service changes the company may introduce when it takes over the service. Bristol city council did, however, confirm that the deal, which it describes as its single largest contract, would cover the following services: residual, organics (food and garden) waste and dry recyclables collection, street cleansing and winter maintenance.
Bristols household recycling collections currently involve cans, paper, glass, foil, aerosols, batteries and textiles being collected in a black box, while food waste is collected weekly using a brown bin and kitchen caddy. Cardboard is also collected alongside food waste, while residual waste is collected using a wheeled bin or black bags.
Plastics
The July 2010 contract notice advertising the deal on the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) also notes that the recycling service being procured should include plastics The council has already run kerbside and bring bank collections on a trial basis in partnership with SITA (see letsrecycle.com story), and these now look set to be rolled-out city-wide under the new contract.
The notice also states that the scope of the contract should, at the least, include a range of other services, including running the citys recycling bring banks. It also includes: flytipped waste; clinical waste collections; bulky household waste; commercial waste; waste from schools and colleges; chargeable domestic collections and bin weighing technologies.
While the value of the deal has not been disclosed, the OJEU notice sets its value at between 84 million and 119 million over the initial seven year period, and as high as 238 million if it runs beyond this.
Disposal
No longer running Bristols collection contract will not spell the end of SITA UKs involvement in the city, after it secured a five-year, 15 million disposal contract from the city council in April 2011 (see letsrecycle.com story ).
This contract, which covers around 67,000 tonnes a year of residual waste, is expected to see the company develop a MRF-type facility at Avonmouth to recover solid recovered fuel from waste. Alongside a contract with New Earth Solutions, it is part of the city councils plan to end the landfilling of its untreated waste by 2014.
Further details of the contract are expected to be made available on or after July 11.
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