Staples Vegetables is to build an anaerobic digestion plant at its Lincolnshire site, turning waste into energy and fertiliser using state-of-the-art technology.

The anaerobic digestion (AD) plant will be delivered by turnkey supplier Xergi Ltd, an international company specialising in the field.

The requirement for using innovative technologies and processes was a precondition for WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) to support the project through DEFRA’s AD Demonstration programme, part of the International Environmental Transformation Fund, run by the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

Staples Vegetables, situated in Wrangle near Boston, Lincolnshire, produces vegetables for the retail industry. Every year the company produces a large amount of surplus organic waste; however, this will now be used as a resource feedstock for the AD plant, due to be operational in Autumn 2010.

The plant makes it possible to extract gas from the waste, and then exploit the gas for renewable energy production in the form of electricity, heat and cooling. In total, the amount of feedstock to be treated in the plant will be approximately 50,000 tonnes per year.

The plant will have a capacity of 1.4MW and is expected to produce 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

Staples Vegetables will harness a large part of the electricity production themselves, with any surplus being delivered as green electricity to the National Grid, the equivalent of the yearly consumption of approximately 1,500 households.

Jørgen Ballermann, chief executive of Xergi, said: “The order from Staples Vegetables is a very important step for Xergi’s strategy of entering the British market for anaerobic digestion plants. We look forward to the co-operation, and to this project which will also be a milestone in the realisation of the British government’s strategy within anaerobic digestion and renewable energy.”