On 27 June 2013, the Milton Keynes Council has formally awarded the contract to design, build and operate a state-of-the-art waste treatment facility in the borough to AmeyCespa with an official signing.

AmeyCespa was named as the preferred bidder following a detailed tender process at the end of October 2012 and since then the company has engaged and consulted with the local community, organising public events and exhibitions to discuss the plans. It has set up a Community Liaison Group, including representatives from areas surrounding the facility, which is meeting regularly to discuss developments and any concerns they may have.

The project has been funded during construction with finance sourced from international project finance banks with AmeyCespa retaining a minority equity stake during operations. The majority of the capital will be paid by the Council through innovative borrowing once the facility has been proven to work.

The project:

The facility will bring together three different technologies to further treat any waste which has not been reused, recycled or composted, in the following ways:

• Mechanical treatment technology will extract recyclable materials from black sack waste, which means they can then be reprocessed into new products
• An anaerobic digestor will treat any food or organic waste left in  black sacks, in turn creating renewable energy and a compost-like material for use on brownfield sites
• An advanced thermal treatment facility will turn any remaining, unrecyclable waste into a gas, which is combusted to generate high temperature steam which then creates electricity in a turbine