Essex County Council has named Indaver the winning bidder for four medium-term residual waste treatment contracts. To begin on 1 April 2025, the contracts are to cover the treatment of "black bag" waste from municipal kerbside collections as well as non-recyclable waste from Essex County Council's recycling centres. The waste will be recovered at Indaver's Rivenhall Integrated Waste Management Facility in the South of England. The plant is currently under construction in Braintree, Essex.
The decision, which was announced on 22 August, provides the County with a medium-term solution for its residual municipal waste. A large share of it has been sent to landfill since the summer of 2020 when the local waste management authority suspended deliveries to the failed mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plant built by its then waste contractor, Urbaser Balfour Beatty (UBB).
The contracts with Indaver are to run for an initial period of seven years, with an option to extend for up to seven additional years. According to the company, the total volume of waste to be managed at the Rivenhall facility under the contracts amounts to 337,000 tonnes per annum. The Council has estimated the potential value of the contract over the maximum running time of 14 years at around £1bn, currently the equivalent of €1.19bn.
Once the Rivenhall energy from waste (EfW) plant is completed next year, Indaver also plans to treat waste containing persistent organic pollutants (POPs) at the facility, which will have a total capacity of 595,000 tonnes per year. The Belgian waste management company secured a one-year contract with Essex County Council for the treatment of POPs in 2023. That contract has been extended, said Indaver.
The new residual waste contracts would "ensure medium-term arrangements are in place for the disposal of our waste while our waste strategy is considered for adoption by our city, district, and borough councils across Essex for the longer term", according to Councillor Peter Schwier, who serves as "climate czar" and cabinet member for environment, waste reduction and recycling for the Essex County Council. "I am also very pleased to see a very early end to our waste going to landfill which will really benefit the environment and help us achieve our net zero ambitions," he added.
The Council's original plans for the treatment of residents' residual waste centred on an MBT plant built in the Tovi Eco Park in Basildon by the joint venture Urbaser Balfour Beatty under a 2012 public-private partnership (PPP) deal. Although commissioning began late in 2014, the MBT facility never passed the full acceptance tests and waste deliveries ceased in June 2020. After protracted legal wrangling, the Council and UBB reached a settlement in April 2022 under which the contractor agreed to demolish the MBT facility and surrender the facility's environmental permit.
The process of selecting a new medium-term waste treatment provider was not without its own difficulties. The Council issued two unsuccessful invitations to tender for the contracts prior to launching a third procurement exercise in January of this year.
