Sembcorp Building First U.K. Energy-from-Waste Plant

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - Korea's Sembcorp Industries Limited (SIN:U96) (Singapore) is to build its first energy-from-waste (EfW) plant, outside of Singapore, in Teesside, in the U.K..

The company's U.K. subsidiary Sembcorp Utilities (Middlesbrough, England) has teamed up with SITA UK Limited (Maidenhead, England) and ITOCHU Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) to build the facility at Sembcorp's Wilton International site, a 2,000 acre industrial estate near Redcar, on Teesside.

The consortium has been selected as the preferred bidder for the Merseyside and Halton Waste Resource and Recovery Contract, which will be worth €1.4 billion ($1.82 billion) over 30 years. The companies expect that the plant will cost around €230 million ($290 million) to construct and, when complete, it will be capable of generating around 49-megawatts (MW) of electricity. SITA UK already operates a large-scale EfW facility at Billingham, while Sembcorp already runs a 300,000-ton-per-year biomass facility on the Wilton International site. SITA UK is a subsidiary of Suez Environment SA (EPA:SEV) (Paris, France).

Sembcorp and SITA UK first announced their intentions to construct the plant back in 2010. For additional information, see August 11, 2010, article - Two Energy-from-Waste Facilities Proposed in the U.K..

The contract will involve managing over 430,000 tons of residual household waste each year from Merseyside and Halton. The consortium will design, build, finance and operate two key facilities that already have planning permission secured: a rail loading waste transfer station in Merseyside and the energy-from-waste facility in Teesside. Both facilities are expected to be operational by 2016. It will generate electricity for around 63,000 homes, while there is potential to provide heat directly to businesses on the Wilton International site.

"This is great news for Teesside, for the environment and for new jobs," noted David Palmer-Jones, Chief Executive Officer of SITA UK. "The two new facilities that we will develop will enable all of Merseyside's household waste to be put to good use. We will create over 70 new full time jobs in Merseyside and Teesside and several hundred more during the construction of our new resource recovery facilities."

Dr. Douglas Annan, Senior Vice President and Site Director of Sembcorp Utilities UK, added: "This marks an important milestone in our plans to grow our renewable energy capabilities. As well as creating jobs and bringing new investment to the area, Wilton 11 will produce electricity using a sustainable fuel source, re-use materials preventing them going to landfill and provide renewably-sourced heat for use in power generation or for distribution to our industrial customers on site."

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