Sleaford area recycling company secures deal to supply £30m biomass energy plant

Mid UK Recycling has won a ten year contract to supply 25,000 tonnes of wood chip a year to the Holbrook Community Renewable Energy Centre Combined Heat and Power Plant (CHP), built by Kantor Energy.

The plant is currently being commissioned and once running will be managed by Veolia Energy Services.

Chris Mountain, Managing Director of Mid UK Recycling, said: “This is major contract for us and gives us the security of long-term, sustainable off-take which in turn means we can more easily guarantee consistency in taking wood in. We have invested heavily to support this project to ensure we can supply good quality biomass chip to the client, and we’re very excited to be a part of it.”

Mid UK Recycling specialises in producing high quality alternative fuels for the cement sector both for the UK and overseas market. With multiple production sites, it can produce over 250,000 tonnes a year in various formats. It also operates a licensed loading facility at the Port of Boston for vessels into Northern Europe.

This latest contract for biomass wood chip has seen Mid UK Recycling invest £1.6 million, including upgrading its waste wood processing facilities at its Caythorpe site and purchasing three new Scania vehicles and three Legras walking floor trailers to deliver the product to the CHP plant.

It has also increased its waste wood intake by 10,000 tonnes a year, sourced from Household Waste Recycling Centres and waste transfer stations in the Midlands and East Anglia areas, as well as local industry.

Mr Mountain added: “We take our responsibility of zero waste to landfill very seriously. We have worked hard over the past five years to ensure we can move waste up the hierarchy by focused investment on the utilisation of advanced recycling technologies.”

Once operational, the Holbrook Community Renewable CHP plant will generate 6.5 MW of renewable electricity and supply heat to around 6,700 local homes and commercial properties. It is estimated it will save approximately 12,700 tonnes of CO2 a year, the equivalent of taking 5,700 cars off the road for the life of the project.