Viridor has signed a £700 million contract with the Clyde Valley Residual Waste Project, the first shared services contract for Scottish Councils, to divert the waste of five local authorities from landfill.

The recycling and waste management company was shortlisted for the twenty-five year contract along with Amey Cespa, Urbaser, Balfour Beatty and FCC Waste Services following a competitive tendering process, which started in January 2013.

Viridor was chosen as preferred bidder in October 2015 and last week signed a contract with North Lanarkshire Council, the lead authority for the project, which signed on behalf on the other Clyde Valley Project members: East Dunbartonshire; East Renfrewshire; North Ayrshire and Renfrewshire Councils.

From 1 December 2019 Viridor will collect residual waste from the five local authorities within the project, capture any recyclable materials within the waste and use the rest to produce refuse derived fuel (RDF), diverting residual waste from landfill in the process.

Partnership will ‘transform waste across the Clyde Valley’

Over the past year, Viridor has called for more resource networks across Scotland and England. Going beyond ‘arbitrary political and geographical local authority boundaries’ would, it says, help to create economies of scale, join up value chains and help plan for and meet regional and social resource infrastructure requirements.

Commenting on the Clyde Valley deal, Saeefar Rehman, Associate Director, Energy and Environment at Grant Thornton, independent professional financial advisers to the partner councils, added: “As the first shared services contract for Scottish councils this project demonstrates the huge benefits that can be generated through collaborative working between councils.

“The contract is set to hugely increase both the efficiency and productivity of the councils’ waste processing systems, but also greatly support the local community, through the introduction of new jobs and improved services for residents.”

Derek Rooney, Technical Director, SLR Consulting Ltd, independent professional technical advisers to the partner councils added: “It has taken 3 years of negotiation to arrive at a solution which helps meet the ambitious environmental targets set by the Scottish Government through the diversion of 190,000 tonnes of residual waste away from landfill for additional recyclate recovery and energy production.”

Jim Logue, Leader of North Lanarkshire Council, said: “This is an important contract in terms of the scale of waste processing and environmental benefits… By working in partnership, we are delivering improved services for residents, best value for tax payers, creating new jobs and recycling more waste which would otherwise go to landfill.”

Clyde Valley Residual Waste Project

The Clyde Valley Project is designed to implement treatment of residual waste prior to the ban on landfilling biodegradable waste, outlined in the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012, which will start in 2021.

The project, which has a commencement target of 2019, will involve processing approximately 190,000 tonnes of residual waste per year and divert over 90 per cent of the participating councils waste from landfill.

By signing the contract Viridor have agreed to design, construct, finance and operate facilities to treat waste the councils involved in the partnership. There are no restrictions included in the contract on the waste collection methods used by each council.

The recyclable material in the residual waste collected will be removed at Viridor’s £22 million Bargeddie facility in North Lanarkshire and treated to produce RDF. This will then be used to produce energy at Dunbar incinerator in East Lothian, which is expected to become operational in December 2017.