SITA preferred bidder for Merseyside contract
The Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority (MRWA) has announced that it has selected SITA UK as its preferred bidder for Merseyside and Halton Waste Partnership’s 30-year Waste Resource and Recovery Contract, following a meeting of authority members yesterday (18 April),
With the bid of rival firm Covanta Energy deemed unsuccessful, the contract, worth a reported £1.18 billion, will see SITA process 430,000 tonnes of unrecycled municipal waste per year.
It is hoped the incinerator will help MRWA divert ‘over 90 per cent of the contract waste’ from landfill.
Contract will go on despite PFI withdrawal
There had been some uncertainty regarding the procurement process for the contract, following the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) withdrawal of £90 million of funding for the MRWA PFI contract in February.
The withdrawal formed part of an overall £271.1 retraction of money from three PFI contracts, after Defra found that the projects would reportedly reduce the likelihood of meeting the 2020 diversion targets by two per cent.
However, it was resolved at the MRWA meeting yesterday to continue the ‘procurement exercise’ as the authority currently landfills most of the waste that hasn’t been recycled and is thus ‘under a duty to procure a more sustainable and affordable alternative to landfill for the Merseyside and Halton Waste Partnership’.
SITA bid details
Tendered by SITA SEMBCORP UK, a consortium led by SITA UK, a subsidiary of SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT, with Sembcorp Utilities UK and I-Environment, (a wholly owned subsidiary of Itochu Corporation), the preferred bid will see the construction of an energy-from-waste (EfW) facility, comprising a Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP), at the Wilton International site in Teesside.
The CHP will generate electricity for the equivalent of 63,000 homes and has ‘the potential to provide steam [for heat] directly to adjacent business customers’, which would further improve its efficiency.
However, as CHP plants require heat to be used locally (unlike electricity) they require a lot of pipework to carry the heat - which can be disruptive.
Speaking to Resource in issue 53, Ricardo-AEA’s Practice Lead on Waste Management and Resource Efficiency Dr Adam Read explained: “CHP can be really difficult to integrate with existing local energy systems. You can find yourselves having to dig up pavements left, right and centre. So, it’s quite disruptive, it’s quite costly, and given the UK situation, which has always been about cheap landfill, it doesn’t tend to be very good value for money.”
‘Beginning of an important new chapter’
The construction of the facility would see the creation of ‘around 50 new permanent jobs’, with a further 25 generated following the construction of ‘a new rail hub’ at the Potter Group Rail Freight Terminal in Kirkby, to deal with the transportation of waste.
According to the MRWA, they will now work with SITA to ‘move towards financial close’ by early 2014, with the EfW plant expected to come on stream in 2016 following a two year construction period.
Chairperson of MRWA, Councillor Joe DeAsha, said: “The appointment of SITA as our preferred bidder marks the beginning of an important new chapter in the way Merseyside and Halton deals with its waste resources.
“I believe that the solution we have chosen is the best for the environment - saving natural resources, generating green electricity and providing value for money for Merseyside and Halton Council Tax payers.”
Chief Executive of Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority, Carl Beer, added: “We are extremely pleased to have progressed to this stage. I’m confident that we can now work towards putting our plans in place and concentrate on providing future generations in Merseyside and Halton with an effective and sustainable waste solution.”
According to the MRWA the contract has ‘the support of all six district councils that form the Merseyside and Halton Waste Partnership.’
Jean-Louis Chaussade, CEO of SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT (parent company of SITA UK), said: “We are delighted that the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority has selected the SITA Sembcorp UK consortium as preferred bidder for this important contract.
“This new contract fits well with SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT’s policy to develop new waste recovery facilities and fits with the UK’s government aspiration to reduce the amount of waste going landfill.”
Overcapacity
The UK's reliance on energy-from-waste facilities in dealing with residual waste remains a contentious issue however, with opponents claiming facilities often greatly overestimate the amount of material available to be incinerated, leading to overcapacity.
Indeed, GAIA (the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives), has warned that the EU’s increasing incineration capacity could damage recycling rates, while Eunomia released a report in 2012 that warned that without any change in residual waste quantities, by 2015/16, there would be treatment ‘overcapacity of 6.9 million tonnes per annum’.
Read more about the Merseyside Recycling Waste Authority.
