Our First Integrated Waste to Energy Plant Project
In April, 2009 we acquired the foundation for our first proposed Integrated Waste to Energy Plant in the form of a 41 acre industrial site in north east England, which is ideally situated and configured from a logistics and infrastructure perspective to be converted into an Integrated Waste to Energy Plant.
We are now approximately 70% of the way towards developing this base into our first Integrated Waste to Energy Business.
The site was a former industrial complex which was initially used by Glaxo as a major penicillin plant and then latterly converted by a group of entrepreneurs into a differentiated bio-diesel plant which utilize waste oils as its primary feedstock.
We have substantially re-configured, improved and re-zoned the site, retaining much of the core infrastructure including storage tanks, commercial and industrial buildings, security perimeter, services and utilities (including an electricity sub-station), plant and equipment, feedstock processing/storage tanks, roadways and hard-standings, and already have the majority of the necessary industrial and environmental permits in place and are in the process of securing the remaining elements.
From a logistics perspective the site is ideal. It is less than two miles away from a deep sea port and adjacent to rail and road links. The site itself has substantial on-site storage and is configured for substantial volumes of product movement into, out of and around the site.
Functionally the site has been configured and remodeled by us such that it is now zoned into several logically interrelated areas including, most importantly:
- A used oil / waste handling area which is configured to handle, store and process a wide range of used organic feedstock materials;
- An energy generating area, which includes an electricity sub-station to export electricity into the grid. This area is configured to house generators which will use feedstock procured and processed by us on site in the two areas referred to above to produce electricity to export into the grid via the sub-station.
- A logistics center for storage, logistics management, traffic handling, weighbridge, security etc.
Other zoned areas for future expansion include (a) a clean handling area which is available to accommodate handling and processing of ‘clean feedstock’ in an appropriate environment; (b) a fuel processing plant area, where we plan in due course to deploy our STT® reactors alongside the existing bio-fuels plant to process a variety of feedstocks into fuel and thereby over time increase our range of on-site feedstocks.
The project to complete the waste to energy plant and to put in place the commercial arrangements that will enable the planned business to thrive is now very well developed; most of the ‘heavy lifting’ has been done and we estimate that the entire project is some 70% complete.
It is encouraging to reflect on the fact that plants in the ‘renewable fuels’ space of similar scale to ours, but which have a narrower focus to ours and are less ‘integrated’, typically have construction costs of over $150 million whilst our total expenditure since inception together with planned future project costs is less that 25% of this amount.
This is a clear reflection of our decision to seek out and acquire financially distressed assets rather than finance green field developments to greatly enhance returns for investors and reduce financial risk.