A Wiltshire-based company has been awarded the first loan from a £10 million DEFRA anaerobic digestion fund to build a plant to turn food waste into energy.
Malaby Biogas has been awarded £800,000 towards a £5m project to build and commission the facility on site of a redundant 12 acre farm in Warminster.
The DEFRA funding, administered by WRAP, will add to support from other backers such as Clydesdale Bank. Construction is underway and commissioning is expected to begin in March.
Malaby director Thomas Minter said Feedstock for the plant will be non-packaged food waste supplied by a new commercial collection operator with additional material potentially coming from other commercial and industrial food waste providers within the local area.
“Initially the plant will process around 17,000 tonnes of waste a year and we’d hope to be able to handle up to 20,000 tonnes at full capacity,” he said.
The plant is expected to generate 4.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, the equivalent required to power 1,000 homes. Around seven per cent of this is likely to be used to power the AD plant itself, and any excess that is generated will be sold on to National Grid.
“Malaby is the first of what we hope will be a number of companies to benefit from the anaerobic digestion loan fund and it is excellent to see such good progress being made at the Wiltshire plant,” said WRAP director Steve Creed.
“We’re currently considering a number of other applications, and the new round of loan awards for 2012 has just begun, so we’d encourage anyone who is interested in the fund to get in touch with us.”
Defra Minister Lord Taylor said: “The energy that can be created from food waste that would otherwise lie rotting in landfill is astonishing. This £800,000 investment from our £10 million anaerobic digestion fund will help this new plant to be built so we can harness that energy to power our towns and cities and remove a cause of greenhouse gas emissions form landfill.”
A maximum of £10m is available through individual loans ranging from £50,000 to £1m over a five-year period. Applications for the current round can be submitted before 30 April.
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