According to AEB, the fire in the early hours of Sunday November 30 2014, which was brought under control by fire services around five hours later, has left two of the facility’s six lines out of operation.
As a result, an AEB spokeswoman said the firm has been in talks with its UK suppliers – including Biffa, Greenways and Andusia – since December over finding alternative outlets in Scandinavia and Germany for RDF while the Amsterdam plant is repaired.
The AEB spokeswoman confirmed that it had stopped importing RDF from its UK suppliers since the beginning of January while it restores the two lines of the facility which are currently out of action, although the facility is still processing domestic RDF.
One UK exporter of refuse derived fuel (RDF) told letsrecycle.com he expected there to be price increases in the UK export market in the short term, as the fire could stop around 100,000 tonnes of UK RDF from being processed at the AEB facility until it is back up and running – expected to be in April.
With AEB’s UK suppliers forced to look elsewhere for their RDF offtake, it is understood that AEB’s insurance company is paying the gate fee costs of these contracted suppliers finding other outlets.
Biffa
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Despite the AEB fire, Biffa said it had arrangements in place to send its RDF to other destinations until the Amsterdam incinerator was fully back up and running.
Jeff Anderson, managing director of Biffa’s industrial and commercial division, said: “Biffa has a number of RDF off-take relationships with European incinerators and the fire at AEB, Amsterdam only impacts two of our RDF production sites in the UK. In one of our larger RDF production plants we have a number of flexible arrangements with other off-takers and these will be used to take up our volumes that would otherwise gone to AEB.
“We understand that the AEB plant will be fully operational in a few months’ time and at that stage we will re-commence delivery of RDF to their plant.”
Steve Burton, co-director of another AEB supplier – Andusia Recovered Fuels Ltd – also said he had made arrangements with its other outlets in Scandinavia to send RDF and that the situation wouldn’t have too much impact on the firm.
He added: “We are a committed partner of AEB so we are doing whatever we can to help them with what is clearly a difficult situation.”
Fire
The blaze at the Amsterdam incineration complex is believed to have broken out in the transformer room, which houses many electrical cables, at around 2am on the morning of Sunday 30th November 2014.
Six lines operate across two incineration facilities at AEB’s complex in the North West of the Dutch capital. The six lines have the combined capacity to process around 1.4 million tonnes of waste each year.
The AEB spokeswoman said: “We had a serious fire on the night of the 30th November affecting the cables that feed two of our six lines, which are currently out of action.
“Immediately after investigating the reasons for the fire we have been in discussions since the beginning of December with our UK suppliers and we have found some facilities for exporting the waste elsewhere.”
The spokeswoman added: “We are helping them to find other outlets in Sweden and Germany.”
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