Shanks joint venture 3SE named Preferred Bidder for £750m PFI Contract

Shanks Group Plc (UK), an independent waste management business, is pleased to announce that its majority owned joint venture, 3SE, has been named Preferred Bidder (subject to agreement) for the UK Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham Waste Partnership (‘BDR’), a 25-year PFI residual waste management contract with a value in excess of £750 million.

Under the BDR contract, Shanks will be responsible for the engineering, procurement and construction (‘EPC’) of the proposed waste management facilities and for the ongoing operation and management (‘OM’) of those facilities.

Shanks will manage over 265,000 tonnes of residual municipal waste per annum, up to 250,000 tonnes of which will be treated at Bolton Road in Rotherham, which will be the site of a proposed Mechanical Biological Treatment (‘MBT’) plant. This process will extract recyclable materials including metals, plastics and aggregates and will also convert the residual waste into a Solid Recovered Fuel (‘SRF’). The SRF will be transported to a proposed multi-fuel plant being developed by SSE (Scottish and Southern Energy) at Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire, where it will be used to generate sustainable electricity. Under the contract Shanks will also build and operate an anaerobic digestion (‘AD’) plant at Bolton Road, which will produce sustainable energy from the organic material produced by the MBT process.

Construction of the MBT and AD plants, which are subject to planning permission being granted, is expected to begin in the Spring of 2013 with the facilities due to open in 2015.