£150m Backing for New Yorkshire Waste Plant

The European Investment Bank has agreed to provide GBP 150 million for a new waste facility to be built at Allerton Park, near Knaresborough, to treat household waste from North Yorkshire and the City of York.

Once operational the new North Yorkshire plant will process “black bag” household waste using mechanical, biological or energy from waste technology. This will increase recycling and diversion from landfill, reduce carbon emissions and generate electricity.

“The European Investment Bank is committed to supporting investment in waste processing that reduces carbon emissions, uses waste to generate green electricity and lowers long-term costs for households. We are pleased to support construction of the new Allerton Waste Recovery Park that will use innovative technologies to reduce the cost of waste management for local authorities, increase recycling and recover energy from waste. This new project represents the first joint investment between the European Investment Bank, and the UK Green Investment Bank, and we look forward to building on this in the years to come.” said Jonathan Taylor, European Investment Bank Vice President.

The new Allerton Waste Recovery Plant waste plant will process up to 320,000 tonnes of household, commercial and industrial waste a year and avoid putting seven million tonnes of waste into landfill sites during its lifetime. The new facility, adjacent to an existing landfill, will include a mechanical pre-treatment facility to recover metal, paper and plastics for recycling, an anaerobic digestion facility to treat organic waste and generate around 6 GWh per year of renewable energy, and an energy from waste plant to produce steam to generate 203 GWh per year of electricity, enough to supply the equivalent of over 40,000 homes.

The new plant will process all residual waste from North Yorkshire County Council and the City of York with remaining capacity used to process commercial and industrial waste sourced locally by AmeyCespa. More than 400 new jobs will be created during construction of the facility and an additional 70 people will work at the Allerton Park site once it is operational.

The borrower and concessionaire for the North Yorkshire and York Waste PPP project will be a special purpose company created by AmeyCespa, a joint venture between UK company Amey Ventures and Cespa from Spain, with Aberdeen UK Infrastructure Partners (a fund managed by Aberdeen Asset Management) and Equitix  as co-sponsors.

The agreement to finance the project marks the first time that the European Investment Bank has invested alongside the Green Investment Bank who is providing GBP 33.1 million for the project. Additional financing is also being provided by Nord LB, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Siemens Bank and KfW-IPEX.