FCC Environment (the British subsidiary of the Environmental Services area of the FCC Group) and the Danish fund Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), holding a 40% and 60% share, respectively, have signed today the financial closing documents for the construction of the Sustainable Energy Plant at Lostock, northwest of England. The construction of the project requires an investment of GBP 480 million (approximately EUR 560 million).

The two-boiler line project will be built by a consortium led by CNIM, an international industrial equipment builder and contractor specialising in waste treatment and energy recovery solutions. The plant is scheduled to be fully operational by mid-2023. The facility, which will be built on land owned by Tata Chemicals, a company to which it will be able to supply industrial steam, will treat 600,000 tons of waste per year, which will contribute to the British Government's strategy to reduce landfilling and the export of waste. Moreover, it will have a 60 MW capacity and will supply power to approximately 110,000 homes, offsetting more than 200,000 tons of CO2 per year.

The future energy recovery plant will convert waste into renewable energy and create hundreds of jobs in the area during the construction and operation phases. After its commissioning, it will become one of the largest energy-from-waste (EfW) plants in the United Kingdom and Europe.

FCC Environment, one of the leading companies in resource and waste management in the United Kingdom, will be responsible for the plant’s Operation and Maintenance (O&M) and the fuel supply, which means that it will deliver the 600,000 tonnes of waste that the plant will process each year.

After the signing of the financial close, Paul Taylor, FCC Environment’s Chief Executive Officer, expressed that "this agreement is a very important event for the waste treatment sector in the United Kingdom, in which we are facing a serious shortage of treatment capacity of non-recyclable waste". In addition, he added that "we have already successfully managed a series of plants in the United Kingdom that generate about 102 MW of clean energy; the plant in Edinburgh will be added this summer. Therefore, this project is an important milestone in our investment strategy in waste-related infrastructures, crucial to process waste and supply energy to households in this country. Likewise, we maintain our strategy to strengthen FCC's position as an owner, supplier and operator of EfW facilities in the United Kingdom".

CIP brings to the project its know-how and the experience gained from its existing projects on renewable thermal energy, where it collaborates hand-to-hand with the local community.

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners P/S (CIP) is a fund management company, which focuses on energy infrastructures, including onshore and offshore wind farms, photovoltaic solar power plants, biomass and waste-to-energy plants and transmission and distribution facilities, as well as other energy assets, such as reserve capacity and storage. CIP has some 75 employees. CIP and its projects are handled from its offices in Copenhagen, the US, United Kingdom, Germany and Taiwan. CIP manages four funds, worth approximately EUR 6,800 million.

In recent years, the environmental services area of the FCC Group has received important awards in the international arena. In January 2018, the company was awarded the contract for the design, funding, construction and operation of the Houston plant that will sort and revaluate the city's recyclable materials and will manage their subsequent sale, for a period of up to 20 years, with a capacity of up to 145,000 tons per year. This facility was recently commissioned and joins the recent recycling plant in Dallas (Texas), which operates at full capacity and has been selected by the National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) as the Best Recycling Facility in North America.

In the United Kingdom, FCC Environment was recently awarded the Northamptonshire Waste Collection and Road Cleansing contract, with an order book value of EUR 20 million. It is also worth noting that the company was awarded the contract for the second phase of the Environmental Complex of Guipúzcoa CMG-2, in Spain, which will treat, recycle and recover energy from 102,000 tons/year of different types of waste over the next 20 years. The Millerhill Recycling and Energy Recovery Centre, near Edinburgh (Scotland), with a capacity exceeding 150,000 tons/year, is in commissioning and will be fully operational soon.

The FCC Group is a global leader in citizen services. The Environment area of the company has been providing municipal services for more than 100 years and has based its success on a commitment to innovation and helping cities become smarter, more sustainable and more socially responsible. It currently serves almost 60 million people in nearly 5,000 municipalities in thirteen countries, with a network of more than 200 energy recovery and recycling plants that process 24.5 million tons of waste per year as a resource, including ten energy-from-waste (EfW) projects with a capacity of more than 2.6 million tons and 300 MW of non-fossil electricity.