SITA branches into low-grade wood recycling

The new processing site at Flixborough Wharf can process 25,000 tonnes of contaminated waste wood a year – and is to be replicated by SITA at other sites across the UK.

The wood includes MDF, painted, veneered and resin-bonded material. This is checked, chipped, and metals removed with a magnet, using equipment already owned by SITA. It is processed to order and customer specification.

Already, 1,100 tonnes have been shipped to a Combined Heat and Power plant in Sweden, but in the long-term SITA is hoping to send it to biomass plants in the UK.

Stuart Hayward-Higham, head of new market business development at SITA UK, said: “The market for use of this material in the UK is small at the moment, but we expect this will develop quickly due to the number of biomass CHP facilities that are in the pipeline. Currently the main interest is from Northern European countries, which already have a network of CHP facilities that run on this type of fuel.

“As a result, we have based our Lincolnshire reprocessing facility at the docks and we are looking to develop others across the country,” he added.

Permission

SITA UK has worked closely with the Environment Agencies in the UK and Sweden to obtain trans-frontier shipment permissions to transport the wood overseas.

It has also found a potential use for the fines (similar to sawdust), which are a by-product of the chipping process. If the ongoing trials are successful this will mean almost all the material delivered to the facility will be used productively.

Mr Hayward-Higham said: “For some time producers of contaminated wood waste materials have had limited treatment and disposal options with the majority of this material ending up in landfill. By creating a product we can market, we can now sell this material for re-use as a fuel to power combined heat and power (CHP) facilities or other specific recycling uses. This is a much more sustainable way of managing this waste stream, even when you take the carbon footprint of transportation into account.”

He added: “We are working with our colleagues across the UK and Europe to develop new outlets for this material. This is a win-win solution for the company and the environment because instead of paying to landfill this material, we are recovering value in both areas.”