Speaking at last week's official opening of the company's new £12 million West Sleekburn MRF and waste transfer station in the county, SITA UK's chief operating officer John Scanlon, praised the role played by the county council and district councils involved in the deal.
“I have to pay tribute to the work of the local authorities; they have done a lot of work,” he said.
While acknowledging that it was “early days” for the contract, Mr Scanlon explained that the delivery of the facilities under the deal was “on-time” and that SITA UK has “delivered facilities”.
West Sleekburn
Though it was officially opened last week, the West Sleekburn project has been up-and-running since November 2008, and offers a 50,000 tonne-a-year capacity materials recycling facility (MRF) and a 70,000 tonne-a-year capacity waste transfer station.
Home to £3.7 million worth of equipment which was provided by an Anglo-German partnership, OKLM, the MRF is able to sort paper, card, plastic bottles, and steel and aluminium cans.
Commenting on the significance of the new facility, SITA UK's general manager for Northumberland, Richard Hinchcliffe, said: “”We know there is a lot of enthusiasm from local people to recycle as much material as possible and the county now has the capability to do it.
“Our new recycling facility uses state-of-the-art mechanical equipment, including optical sorting equipment, which can identify and separate paper, card, PET plastics and HDPE plastics, to process 15 tonnes per hour of mixed recyclable materials.
“This will enable us to process up to 50,000 tonnes a year at West Sleekburn, which is about twice as much as is currently collected across the whole of Northumberland.
“This gives us the flexibility to meet the additional demand we expect in the future as the residents of Northumberland continue to embrace and support the kerbside mixed recyclables scheme,” he added.
As part of the contract, Northumberland county council – which, on April 1 became a new unitary authority when the county's six district councils ceased to exist – and SITA UK have committed to achieving a 45% household recycling rate by 2029.
Tees Valley
SITA UK has also said that it aims to reduce the percentage of the county's municipal waste sent to landfill to just 8% by 2012, and the company is currently commissioning an extension to at its existing Tees Valley energy-from-waste facility in nearby Stockton to process up to 120,000 tonnes per annum of Northumberland's residual household waste.
Providing an update on the extension, the plant's manager, Mark Atkinson, told letsrecycle.com that there was set to be “five or six weeks left of commissioning”, at the end of a two-year construction period.
The Tees Valley EfW plant already burns up to 230,000 tonnes-a-year of residual waste from four nearby councils – Stockton, Redcar & Cleveland, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough – in its two existing lines which have been operational for 10 years.
Subscribe for free