Business

Waste firm Re-Gen invests £5m in fossil fuel alternative facility

NEWRY-based Re-Gen Waste has invested £5 million in the development of its existing processing facility at Carnbane industrial estate to produce a high specification replacement for traditional fossil fuels, for use in cement kilns and power stations.

The expansion has generated 20 construction jobs in the build phase and will create a further 30 permanent positions when up to full production by next month.

Re-Gen provides mixed dry recycling and municipal solid waste collection and processing services for public authorities and private companies across Britain and Ireland, and it also recovers energy from unrecyclable household waste, that is sent by many councils, to landfills.

The company already exports 80,000 tonnes of solid recovered fuel annually, but will manufacture higher calorific value pellets and baled material for the cement and steel industries, which will be shipped to Europe through local ports.

Managing director Joseph Doherty said: “This is an incredibly important area of our work, as our ‘throw-away’ society is generating in excess of 27 million tonnes of mixed household waste a year in the UK.

“All the materials that come into our lives will be one day discarded and there are ultimately two choices we can make; they can be treated as waste and end up in landfills or be treated as a resource and reprocessed to find a home in our economy.”