The new plant has planning permission to treat 200,000 tonnes of residual waste a year and will serve public sector and commercial customers in the North East and Scotland.
Currently, the French-owned waste management company operates five energy-from-waste process lines in Teesside, which between them serve the authorities of Stockton, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland and Northumberland as well as those comprising the South Tyne & Wear Waste Management Partnership.
Process lines
The five process lines are divided between two facilities based at the same location in Haverton Hill, near Billingham, known as SUEZ Tees Valley (STV) 1, 2 & 3 and The North East Energy Recovery Centre.
The new plant will be on the same site and received planning permission in 2014, with the company currently in the process of procuring an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contractor to build the new facility and it is anticipated that it will become operational in 2022.
Market confidence
David Palmer-Jones, chief executive of Suez, said the plant shows a sign of the company’s confidence in the UK market.
“For several years now, we have been keeping a close eye on residual waste treatment capacity at a national and regional level through our Mind the Gap analysis reports, which show that the UK has a shortfall in vital non-landfill waste treatment capacity,” he explained.
Mr Palmer-Jones added: “Brexit, and the questions it raises around the future of residual waste exports, only strengthens the case for additional domestic treatment capacity. We are therefore very pleased that the SUEZ group continues to see the potential of the UK market and has chosen to invest in this new facility to serve public sector and commercial customers in the North East and Scotland.”
Portfolio
The latest Stockton on Tees facility will join Suez’s portfolio of EfW plants which includes facilities in Cornwall, which was opened in June this year (see letsrecycle.com story) and Aberdeen, which was opened in October 2017 (see letsrecycle.com story).
The announcement also comes soon after Defra officials explained that there will be a focus in the Resources and Waste Strategy on recycling rather than on incineration.
Defra official Chris Preston said in an Audit committee meeting that the European Commission “is very concerned about the explosion of incineration around the European Union, it doesn’t massively want to encourage it in the future.”
Resources minister Therese Coffey also added in the meeting that she was “not convinced that we want to massively increase the amount of incineration we are doing. There is sufficient capacity out there for incineration… we have too much across the European Union.”
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