COMPANY PROFILE


locations across the UK, or export it abroad using its established trade routes.


This is a sector currently under some scrutiny. A gap in the way clinical waste is disposed of was highlighted last year when investigations were launched into clinical waste operator Healthcare Environmental Services (HES). It followed claims that hundreds of tonnes of medical waste had built up at some sites in England and Scotland.


The firm ceased trading before Christmas with the loss of around 400 jobs. Events revealed an apparent lack of high temperature incinerators similar to those now being planned by Clinitek, capable of coping with clinical waste – including body parts – from hospitals.


Starting out


With consistent demand from European customers seeking waste for hungry CHP plants, the business could possibly have just sat back and let the work continue to roll in.


However, the company recently announced it is now moving into the hazardous and clinical waste sector; a development which means it will become the sole supplier for a new hazardous waste incinerator business, Clinitek, which is part of energy plant developer AssetGen Partners.


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The move will see Andusia link up with clinical and hazardous waste disposal specialists currently working with hospitals and other hazardous waste producers. It will then offer a new destination for their waste, Clinitek’s five new high temperature hazardous and clinical waste incinerator plants at various


Veterans of the waste industry with around 40 years of experience between them, Steve and partner Stewart had been scouting for a joint venture that would enable them to combine their considerable expertise. Steve was self- employed as a consultant; Stewart was at the helm of a small recycling business and the UK’s RDF export market was in its infancy.


Then, a client with packaging to dispose of which he did not want to send to landfill got Steve thinking of waste-to- energy (WtE) solutions.


He looked at the cement energy market, where cement production is made more efficient by burning biomass waste as opposed to fossil fuels, and the heat of the production process is used to generate electricity.


However, the market in the UK was small. It was while Steve attended the annual RWM conference that he heard of combined heat and power plants in Europe – particularly the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Norway – which were desperate for a source of waste material.


Now, seven years on – and apart from its impact on the pound, relatively unperturbed by Brexit – he senses yet another potential new market.


“We hear a lot of comments asking why we don’t use this waste material in the UK, and why it’s being exported,” he said. “But in the early days of this, it was landfill waste and Europe was a lot further ahead than the UK.


“Some countries in Europe had a landfill ban which meant incinerators were a core part of waste management. In Scandinavia, the bedrock of the country is granite, so there’s not a lot of landfill.


“But now we’re seeing investors building more incineration plants here.”


Clean energy


Pollution once linked with burning waste is no longer an issue, he points out. “People see incinerators as bad, but the choice is ‘incinerate or landfill’ because you can’t recycle everything.


“The technology has grown and developed so that all that comes out of a WtE plant is vapour; it’s not smoke.


“It’s not a dirty system,” he stressed. “It’s a significant step up from landfill, where waste goes in land and rots away over a thousand years. It’s a lot more environmentally sound.


“We’re confident the market will evolve in the UK,” he adds. “I can see us being significantly bigger in three or four years.”


www.andusia.co.uk


People see incinerators as bad, but the choice is ‘incinerate or landfill’ because you can’t recycle everything.


SHWM March, 2019 41


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