East Sussex county council has granted planning permission to Haulaway for a 40,000 tonnes per annum dry mixed recycled Material Recovery Facility (MRF) on their site at Summerhill Lane, Hailsham.
Approval was given at East Sussex’s regulatory and planning committee council meeting last Thursday (15 March).
The planning permission will enable a MRF to be added to undeveloped land at the Hailsham site, which currently has storage and baling facilities as well as material storage bays.
Haulaway, which is based in Hailsham, says the facility will be able to process over 40,000 tonnes of household waste per annum and is currently being commissioned. The company said it hopes that the site will be fully operational before the end of the year.
It is thought to be the only MRF in the surrounding area that can handle glass. Regional sites with glass capacity include Viridor in Crayford and at Ford and a Brighton MRF, which is run by Veolia, and currently takes material from East Sussex.
Hailsham is in Wealden district council area which is one of four councils covered by the East Sussex Joint Waste Partnership. The other authorities are: Rother, Hastings and Eastbourne. Currently under the partnership’s recycling contract with Kier, glass is collected separately to the rest of the materials and sent to a sorting plant in Warwickshire. However, arrangements will change in summer 2019 when Kier leaves the contract early.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com following the decision to grant planning permission, Steve Walton, business development manager at Haulaway, said that the site was an ideal fit as the company has been there for a number of years.
Haulaway says the MRF will be able to process over 40,000 tonnes of household waste per annum
He commented: “This site was considered due to the great infrastructure and accessibility to provide a scheme that would meet that vision. The MRF will be the only facility of its kind within our local area that has been designed to deal with co-mingled DMR that contains glass from the domestic sector.”
The new facility will cover 2.26 hectares and he hopes it will receive waste from domestic kerbside recycling when the contract is renegotiated with a different company to Kier taking on the collection work next year.
Kier
In March 2017, services firm Kier agreed to an early end to a 10-year waste and recycling collection contract with the four East Sussex councils in the partnership.
The contract covers nearly 200,000 households over a 550 square mile area, and was thought to be worth up to £120 million over its 10-year lifetime, when signed in December 2012 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Kier has said the decision to quit was taken due to ‘significant’ change in the recycling market. The recycling collection contract is currently in the procurement process. The Partnership is using a Competitive Procedure with Negotiation (CPN) to procure the new contract.
Residual waste treatment is handled by East Sussex County Council’s contractors Veolia.
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Source: letsrecycle.com General
