Multi-million pound Northern Irish contract out for tender

A group of 11 Northern Irish councils have begun the procurement process to build the country's first ever Energy-from-Waste and mechanical biological treatment facilities, at a cost of between £200 million and £500 million.

The arc21 waste management partnership has published a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Union, inviting tenders for the award, which would last for between 25 and 40 years.

Prospective contractors must be willing to design, build, operate, maintain and/or finance two MBT facilities with the joint capacity to process 400,000 tonnes of municipal waste a year, as well as an Energy-from-Waste plant with a capacity of up to 370,000 tonnes a year.

While they will be focussed on processing municipal waste, all three plants will have the potential to take commercial and industrial waste, subject to agreement with the partnership, including up to 180,000 tonnes of the EfW facility's capacity.

Site selection

At the same time as inviting bids from waste management companies, the partnership, which was formed in 2003 and brings together councils from the east of Northern Ireland, has begun a process to allow it to identify possible sites for the facilities.

The chairman of arc21's joint committee, alderman Hubert Nicholl, explained: “As we initiate the procurement process, arc21 is conducting a parallel site selection exercise to identify potential sites for the new facilities.

“As part of a wide trawl we have asked central government, the private sector and all of our constituent councils if they have any sites that they wish to make available as part of the site selection process.

“These two processes run in tandem and, once preferred sites have been finalised, arc21 will publish the details and undertake widespread public consultation,” he added, with the site selection process expected to finish by the end of 2008.

Reflecting this site search, the OJEU notice for the contract indicates that “outline planning permission may be sought by the contracting authority for MBT facilities before the appointment of a preferred bidder”.

And, the notice also informs prospective bidders that they may be expected to begin work on some parts of the contract before others, citing “the design and build of an MBT facility (by way of an Advance Works Order)” as one potential example of this.

Recycling

Arc21's members achieved a 24.8% municipal waste recycling and composting rate in 2006-07, and as a result sent 434,649 tonnes of municipal solid waste to landfill.

In line with targets outlined in the revised EU Waste Framework Directive, the partnership is targeting a 50% recycling and composting rate by 2020 – 7% of which would be made up of recyclables produced by the MBT process.

A spokesman for the partnership told letsrecycle.com that: “The focus is primarily on recycling and reuse, there's no reason why you can't run EfW alongside a high recycling rate.”

Timeline

The timeline for the project gives prospective bidders until October 16 to submit a tender or request to participate in the bidding process.

Arc21 is then aiming to award the contract by July 2010 and hopes to receive planning permission for the first of the two MBT plants by January 2011 and for the EfW facility by June 2011.

It then envisages having the first MBT plant up-and-running by April 2012, with the EfW facility operational by March 2014.

Partnerships

Arc21, which was established in 2004, is one of three waste partnerships which, between them, are responsible for waste management for Northern Ireland's 26 councils, with arc21's area producing 57% of the country's municipal waste arisings.

All three partnerships have previously indicated that they hope to utilise MBT to address their need to reduce the amount of waste they send to landfill (see letsrecycle.com story), but arc21 is the first to tender for a contractor to make its plans become a reality.