Pinsent Masons advises on Welsh energy-from-waste plant

The North Wales Hub Food Waste PPP is an anaerobic digestion food waste project in Waen, Denbighshire. The facility will treat up to 22,500 tonnes of source segregated food waste collected by Denbighshire County Council, Flintshire County Council, Conwy County Borough Council and commercial food waste.

The waste will be processed to create a nutrient-rich digestate that will be used as fertilizer on local farms, and methane gas. An on-site CHP plant will use the purified methane gas to generate 1 MWe of renewable energy to be fed back to the national grid – enough to power 1500 houses continually for one year.

Oliver Mangiapane, a Senior Associate at Pinsent Masons who was part of the team advising the 'Hub' of councils on the project, says that the new plant will be a significant source of power for years to come.

He says:

"This is the third energy-from-waste project our market-leading Energy Projects team has completed in the past six months, following similar completions in Scotland and Northern Ireland. This project will enable the environmentally friendly recycling of an otherwise problematic waste stream, diverting waste from landfill and fulfilling Welsh Government's Waste Strategy for Wales. The latest successful close shows the continued attractiveness of energy-from-waste assets to a broad range of investors."

The facility itself will be built by Biogen and is expected to be fully operational by April 2014.

The Pinsent Masons team acting on the project comprised Oliver Mangiapane, Didar Dhillon, Gemma Glasspole, Jonathan Vickers, Arminder Dhillon and Nathalia Perera.