Wood Recycler invests £4 million on Teesside with RHK's support
Date: 06-04-2006
New business venture UK Wood Recycling is set to launch at SembCorp’s Wilton site after being awarded a Selective Finance for Investment (SFI) grant with the assistance of RHK.
UK Wood Recycling (UKWR) will invest £4 million in a state of the art woodchip recycling unit and employ up to 40 people at the Wilton International site, where it will produce a range of recycled wood products including horse, cattle, poultry bedding and compost as well as wood chip for a new wood burning power station — Wilton 10, which is being constructed by SembCorp.
SembCorp Utilities UK is the leading industrial utilities and services business on Teesside and one of the largest in the UK. The company has around 600 employees and an annual turnover of £182 million. It provides steam, electricity, water, industrial gases and support services to the major manufacturers on the Wilton site. These include Dow, ADVANSA, Huntsman and Uniqema. The 2000 acre Wilton International site is one of the largest industrial sites in the UK and one of the few capable of servicing the needs of large chemical and industrial plants. SembCorp’s exisiting Wilton power station generates 197 MW of electricity per annum. The company’s growth strategy includes increasing its energy generation capacity to attract further customers onto the Wilton site.
Construction of Wilton 10 began last year and it is expected to be operational by the middle of 2007. The pioneering £60 million project will generate 30 MW of electricity per annum using wood as its fuel source. The biomass boiler will burn 300,000 tonnes of wood fuel per annum. This wood fuel will comprise specially grown energy crops, wood from conventional forestry, sawmill chips and recycled waste wood. Wood-waste biomass fuel is important to the overall fuel stream given its low moisture content enabling the boiler to burn at a greater efficiency.
UKWR has been awarded a ten-year contract by SembCorp to supply the required 80,000 tonnes of recovered wood chip fuel per annum. The wood supplied to Wilton 10 will be engineered to a certain specification before being burned in the boiler. UKWR has installed a rigorous testing and sampling quality system to ensure the specification is met, including an onsite laboratory. Other markets for the recycled wood products will be developed alongside the SembCorp Contract.
SembCorp’s Managing Director, Paul Gavens, said “We are delighted to have UKWR working alongside us in this exciting project for the Wilton site. UKWR was selected as its management has a proven track record and strong reputation within the wood-recycling industry. This partnership will form for the basis for both companies to have successful futures”.
Paul Harrison, Operations Director for UKWR, commented “We selected the North East as the location due to both the opportunity to work alongside SembCorp and also the high quality professional advice available. We enlisted RHK to identify grant funding available towards the project and they were successful in accessing a substantial grant”.
Michael Cantwell, Corporate Finance Executive at Gateshead based accountancy practice RHK, said “We would like to praise One NorthEast for offering an SFI grant that addresses the risks faced by UKWR. Being awarded the grant funding gives management real confidence to enter such a long term contract. RHK is currently working alongside One NorthEast to identify further grant funding that may be available towards this integral project for the Wilton site”.
John Leer of Tees Valley Regeneration, who helped UKWR in negotiations with SembCorp, commented “We are delighted to have brought together two companies who are leaders within their own industries. We hope that the biomass boiler will attract further investment onto the Wilton site”.
Ian Williams, Head of One NorthEast’s Business Investment and Finance Team, said “We are delighted to have been able to play our part in this environmentally beneficial project which will be a major business asset to the Tees Valley and the North East as a whole. The £240,000 SFI grant will help establish the company and create 40 new jobs in the key area of green waste recycling.“
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