Billingham, Teesside, UK: A major extension at the Haverton Hill energy-from-waste facility in the Tees Valley has passed "stringent performance trials" and has been handed over by contractors to the company, announced SITA UK yesterday (Wednesday).
The £70 million plant was completed to budget and on time, according to the company.
The extension was built on behalf of Northumberland County Council to provide an additional 136,000 tonnes capacity bringing the total plant capacity to nearly 390,000 tonnes per annum.
Tees Valley Energy-from-waste Plant
The company says that as Northumberland County Council’s partner, it is committed to major investment in state-of-the-art facilities that can help achieve ambitious landfill diversion targets.
SITA UK expects around 110,000 tonnes of waste at the Tees Valley Efw facility in the next few years, rising to 130,000 tonnes in later years, under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) signed with Northumberland County Council in 2006.
This leaves 20-25,000 tonnes a year of spare capacity in the early years which will be made available "at market prices" to other potential customers.
In 2008 Northumberland's residents generated 160,000 tonnes of waste and achieved a recycling and composting rate of over 38 per cent, with 5 per cent being used as a fuel to generate electricity - the balance went to landfill.. By 2012 the target is to recycle and compost over 45 per cent of household waste in the county, to recover energy from non-recyclable waste and reduce the amount being sent to landfill to only 8 per cent. This should make Northumberland one of the greenest counties in the UK, according to the Council.
Energy
The plant extension is expected to yield around 10MW of electricity giving in total over 30MW of power from the whole facility - 10MW is sufficient to power 12, 000 homes. The power produced will be fed into the National Grid.
Richard Hinchcliffe, SITA UK’s General Manager for the Northumberland PFI contract, said:
“This major new facility will ensure SITA UK is able to achieve its commitments to Northumberland and the rest of the north east. I am really pleased that one of the Tees Valley’s largest construction projects and the testing of some extremely complex equipment has been commissioned without a hitch and exceeded all expectations.
Councillor Alan Thompson, Northumberland County Council’s Executive Member for the Environment commented:
“The completion of the extension on budget and on time, with an excellent health and safety record and capped-off with the remarkably successful performance trials, are a tribute to everyone who has worked on this important project.
“This new extension will help the county council to transform recycling and waste management in the county. The ultimate aim is to reduce the county’s long-term reliance on landfill, so that just eight per cent of the county’s waste goes to landfill by 2012.
“Our investment in energy-from-waste is driven by environmental considerations but also by the financial uncertainties of relying on landfilling. Access to the Tees Valley EfW facility will provide a huge benefit to the environment and save council tax payers millions of pounds in landfill tax in future years.