A LARGE new incinerator is under construction in Bridgwater, due to be completed in 2021.

The new 7.75MW ‘Resource Recovery facility' is being built on land off Showground Road opposite Blake Veterinary Surgery.

The large £72m facility, being funded by two big investment funds, will process approximately 100,000 tonnes of 'commercial and municipal refuse derived fuel' per year, which would otherwise have been destined for landfill.

Construction began in 2019 and it is expected to begin operating commercially in 2021.

The new facility, being funded by Equitix and Iona Capital, will employ up to 25 full time operational staff.

Contractor STC Power, a specialist in thermal energy plants, will deliver the project, while Pinnacle Power has been appointed as the ‘operations and maintenance contractor.

The waste itself will be supplied by a firm called Geminor, who are a leading exporter and supplier of refuse derived fuel, known as RDF.

Geminor has signed up to a long-term waste supply contract.

Geoff Jackson, chief executive officer of Equitix, said: “This new project marks the latest addition to our growing waste portfolio.

“This is a sector that we see huge opportunities in and are very excited to be working with our partners, Iona Capital, in developing this top-quality, high-impact facility.”

Nick Ross, director and co-founder of Iona Capital said: “We are very pleased to partner Equitix in the financing of the Bridgwater project which is the first of a number of planned investments in the EfW sector.”

There are plans for two buildings on the site - a material recovery facility which would process the material through a combination of manual and mechanical sorting systems to remove recyclable materials.

The remainder of the waste stream would then be shredded through a purpose designed machine to produce a fuel for energy recovery.

There will also be a second building known as the energy recovery facility, which will receive prepared fuel into a bunker/storage system which would then be fed into a ‘gasification unit’.

The gases generated by this process would then be used to raise steam in a conventional boiler for utilisation in steam turbines – and the resultant electricity would be exported into the local electrical distribution grid.