Biomass Recycling Facility

Olus are proud to present their new, state of the art facility to recycle wood and bulky waste.  Opened in October 2012 the new facility is expected to deal with 25,000 tons of wood and bulky waste annually from household recycling sites, building contractors and the timber construction industry; waste that without recycling would end up in a landfill.  With a million pounds of investment Olus are doing their bit to help the UK towards meeting its renewable energy targets, producing biomass product, running 6 days a week the new facility has also created two new jobs for local people.

Nick Hawthorne, Operations Director, explains more about Biomass and the new facility:

Historically, humans have harnessed biomass derived energy products since the time when people began burning wood to make fire, in this case Biomass means the production of electricity using incinerators – the product we produce fuels those incinerators.

The wood and other waste would end up in a landfill and by avoiding the landfill we can also save companies money. With landfill tax ready to rise beyond £90 per tonne this helps local businesses and the environment.

 

    

We will are exporting biomass product to Sweden and Scotland and Grade C wood for paper recycling to Belgium.

There are only a handful of burners in the UK and there are so many in Germany, France, Sweden etc. that they haven’t got enough wood to supply them, so that is why the UK is exporting wood to them.  We, the UK, do need to catch up though and we hope that to enable us to meet  European targets we will be supplying wood to local companies creating electricity in this way in the future. 

We use the latest shredding and screening equipment from Austria that has been tried and tested over many years in facilities in Europe so we can produce the same high quality product to the European markets.   All of the wood and other waste is weighed over a weighbridge which helps us keep accurate records of input and output and a mass balance.

 

            

Dust and noise are the main environmental impacts, the building is insulated and the machines are fitted with the latest sound proofing, there is also state of the art dust suppression fitted in the building making sure all dust is kept inside and managed - there are fine mist sprays to keep any wood dust fines under control.  Keeping wood out of landfill to create energy is a great form of recycling, taking something that would normally be thrown away and using it for something useful.  A little known fact is that there is more pollution put into the atmosphere on every bonfire night than there is in a lifetime of a biomass incinerator and the product is carbon neutral because the carbon dioxide absorbed whilst the wood is ‘alive’ is the same as is created when the wood is burnt.  

 

                

Olus are committed to producing quality products from recycled material, always using best practice and exploring new possibilities for recycled products.  More recycling is required nationally for us to reach European targets so as an industry we are growing; with new ideas coming forward all the time.