The Manufacturer Magazine : Promoting best practice in Manufacturing

Inetec, Touch of alchemy

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer
Zone : Energy business
Published : January 2007

Inetec designs outstanding environmental technology that converts industrial food waste into a valuable energy source. Phil Nicholas, CEO, talked to Jayne Flannery about the company’s key role in creating a more sustainable future

Organic waste from the agricultural and food processing industries is generated in vast quantities. Retailers and caterers add to the mountain of rotting produce and discarded foodstuff. For just about every company involved, disposing of this unwanted waste is an expensive, irksome and unpleasant chore that adds no value at all to their core operations.

Then, Inetec came onto the scene. This leading Welsh company, based just west of Cardiff, is one third owned by the Welsh Assembly alongside two institutional investors. This is a company whose core business lies in designing cutting-edge environmental technology that transforms industrial food waste into biomass fuel, then electricity. It is clean, sustainable and has massive financial and environmental benefits over traditional landfill disposal methods.

CEO Phil Nicholas described the three stage transformation process. “The first stage is processing industrial food waste using a technique that is increasingly described as abrasive drying. Here, we convert unsegregated food waste along with any packaging, which is a very important feature of Inetec technology, into an oily sand like material. This is now a biomass fuel. Following on from the fuel preparation stage, we can use a whole range of conversion technologies to transform that waste into a gaseous state. The third stage is converting that gas into electricity using a standard gas engine or gas turbine.”

He is particularly grateful for the assistance given by national bakery chain Gregg’s of Newcastle, one of Inetec’s first customers and an early adopter of this emerging technology. “Their support has been fantastic in allowing us to develop our early stage technology alongside their own operations,” he said.

Peter Boughton, project engineer with Gregg’s commented: “Taking into account environmental and financial considerations, it is my belief that the Inetec waste processor is the best technology available for converting food waste into bio-fuel. The bio-fuel can then be used to locally generate hot water, steam or space heating.”

Inetec is essentially a research, development and market development company. All manufacturing is subcontracted to three manufacturers and assemblers drawn from the foremost tier of the British metal fabrication industry. This allows the company to focus on evolving a whole new generation of environmental technology.

The next step forward is an ambitious project that Nicholas hopes will create the UK’s first power generation plant of this type at a site near Immingham, on Humberside.

The plant will be operated by EnCycle a wholly-owned subsidiary of Inetec and is being developed at a cost in excess of £50 million in conjunction with leading food processors, including major players like Northern Foods and Greencore. Once operational the plant will process almost 500 tonnes per day of food alongside any non-recyclable packaging material. The output will be enough electricity to power 37,000 homes. This is the first project in a sequence of 10 projects giving national coverage.

“This project represents a great achievement not only for Inetec, but also for our partners. It will be a major landmark in making the shift towards renewable energy sources and demonstrating the commitment that some British companies have to furthering the environmental agenda,” he concluded.

Comments on this story

click here to add a comment

Related Content