Sterecycle Ltd, a leading UK waste recycling technology company, today
announces a £200 million expansion programme that will create 300 new
jobs while reducing Britain’s dependence on landfill for the disposal of
domestic and commercial refuse.
As part of the expansion programme, the Company is raising £50 million
in new equity capital from institutional investors and has appointed UBS
as financial adviser for the fund raising.
Sterecycle plans to build and operate five new recycling plants around
the UK based on its proprietary steam autoclaving technology, increasing
its total capacity to handle unsorted household and commercial waste to
approximately 1.5 million tonnes a year – equivalent to the annual waste
produced by a city of three million people. These facilities, to be
built over four years, will also provide local authorities with a
commercially proven alternative to mass incineration of waste, a
contentious local issue.
The expansion follows the successful ramp-up of processing capacity at
Sterecycle’s initial autoclave waste recycling plant in Rotherham,
Yorkshire – the world’s first commercial-scale facility that applies
steam to separate and recycle unsorted household waste. This pioneering
plant, built on a former British Steel works, commenced operations last
June. Its capacity is being increased up to 200,000 tonnes a year,
following a successful planning application in January 2009. Using
proprietary technology, Sterecycle’s recycling plant is able to divert
70% of residual waste away from landfill, converting unsorted household
waste into a variety of reusable materials and an organic compost-like
material.
Demand for Sterecycle’s recycling technology and services is increasing
as local authorities come under intense pressure to meet UK and European
Union directives to reduce landfill use or face the threat of heavy
financial penalties. In addition, the recent UK budget means that
landfill tax will increase to £72 per tonne by 2013.
Since its foundation in 2003, the Company has raised a total of £23
million in equity finance, with funds coming from blue chip
institutional investors including Goldman Sachs, Fidelity International,
Impax Environmental and Ailsa3Ventures.
Duncan Grierson, Chief Executive and Founder of Sterecycle, commented:
“We are delighted to announce a bold growth strategy as local
authorities increasingly seek innovative solutions to reduce landfill
use for disposing of unsorted waste. The investment will increase our
total number of plants to six and will create 300 new jobs across
Britain. The fact that we are raising £50 million in a tough economic
climate is a reflection of our confidence in Sterecycle’s novel
technology and long-term prospects.”
The use of steam, or “autoclaving”, in the waste sector has previously
been relatively small-scale and limited to sterilising medical waste.
Sterecycle’s clean waste treatment process “steam sterilises” the
unsorted waste at low temperatures in rotating 40 feet long sealed
vessels called autoclaves, using a combination of steam and pressure,
treating 25 tonnes of waste in each batch. The waste is then sorted
using a series of recycling processes such as size screening, magnetic
separation and infra-red. The process is able to sterilise and recycle
the steam cleaned metals and plastics, as well as convert the waste food
and paper into a high quality organic fibre (sterefibre®)
that has many applications, including as a renewable energy source or as
a soil enhancer for land remediation.
Notes to Editors:
Sterecycle is a waste recycling technology company focused on the
diversion of household waste from landfill and the creation of green
energy. Sterecycle’s proprietary autoclave process uses steam to
sterilise and recycle 70% of the typical household waste stream, by
converting ‘black-bag’ waste into c.50% organic fibre – sterefibre®
– and 20% non-organics such as metal, plastic and glass that
can be recycled. sterefibre® is a clean
compost-like material that has a wide variety of applications, such as a
source for renewable energy, for land restoration and for the
manufacture of cardboard boxes. The Sterecycle process is complementary
to ‘source separation’ recycling and kerbside schemes as it treats the
remaining black-bag waste that would otherwise be sent to landfill.
At present some 55% of all UK household waste is dumped into landfill
sites where it biodegrades to produce methane, a dangerous greenhouse
gas that is 23 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Sterecycle
builds, owns and operates waste plants, charging gate fees per tonne for
processing waste as a substitute for landfill. The Company has built the
world’s 1st commercial scale autoclave plant for household waste in
Yorkshire, with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes a year, treating black-bag
waste from Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster Councils. The Sterecycle
technology is lower cost than mass burn incineration, achieves
significant levels of recycling and its waste management facilities
require only a few months to gain planning permission compared with
years for mass burn incineration.
16 million tonnes of municipal waste are landfilled every year in the
UK. The British government is committed to reducing landfill and has
increased Landfill Tax from £12 per tonne in 2003 to £40 per tonne in
2009, which will continue to increase by £8 per tonne each year to 2013
when it will reach a total of £72 per tonne. The Institute of Civil
Engineers has estimated that over £10 billion of infrastructure
investment is required by 2015 in order to meet the diversion targets of
the EU Landfill Directive.
For more information, please visit www.sterecycle.com
Sterecycle Ltd
Duncan Grierson, CEO
+44 20 7361 1820
or
Corfin
Communications Ltd
Neil Thapar, Martin Sutton, Alexis Gore,
Claire Norbury
+44 20 7977 0020