Kent County Council (KCC) has awarded waste management company New Earth Solutions (New Earth) with a five-year contract to process around 17,000 tonnes of food waste a year.
The contract, which was signed by KCC in relation to food waste collected from the Mid-Kent councils of Maidstone, Gravesham, Swale and Ashford, commenced on Monday (2 February) and is expected to be worth more than £2 million over the course of its five-year, two-month lifetime. However, KCC has the option to extend the current contract in two phases: the first for a further four years, and the second by another two years, taking the contract to a maximum of 11 years and two months (worth an estimated £4 million).
All food waste collected from Maidstone, Gravesham, and Ashford residents will initially be processed at New Earth’s 50,000 tonne-per-annum (tpa) in-vessel composting (IVC) facility in Blaise, Kent (pictured, right). Due to the re-development of the waste transfer station that accepts Swale’s food waste, deliveries from this borough will be sent to the facility from March/April 2015. New Earth has just received planning permission to build an anaerobic digestion facility adjacent to the IVC plant, and the company intends to eventually treat the food waste from the four councils there.
Food waste was previously sent for composting at the Countrystyle Group’s IVC facility in Ridham.
Richard Brooke, Commercial Director at New Earth, told Resource: “The food waste contract is the fourth contract Kent County Council has awarded New Earth, following on from the 30,000 tpa co-mingled food and green waste contract in 2009, and two green waste contracts (comprising 30,000 tpa in total) awarded last year.”
Brooke added that food waste will only be composted in the short-term, stating: “We’ve just received planning permission to build a 50,000 tpa anaerobic digestion (AD) plant on land adjacent to the IVC. This is the final piece of the jigsaw and will mean we will have greater flexibility in handling both green waste and food waste.
“Construction on this facility will begin later this year, and we expect the facility will become operational next year. So, we’re basically running on the basis of accepting the food waste at our IVC for now and then pushing it to the AD in 2016/17.”
According to Brooke, the new AD facility will produce up to three megawatts of electricity and create six full-time positions once operational in 2016/17.
Find out more about New Earth Solutions.
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