HZI Consortium wins tender for 20 year waste services contract in Perth, Australia
A Perth Regional Council awarded a 20-year municipal waste service contract to a consortium led by Swiss company Hitachi Zosen Inova. The plant will process 300,000 tonnes of waste per annum generating around 28 MW of electricity from Australia’s first energy-from-waste.
Council Tender by EMRC for 20 Year Waste Treatment
The Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council (EMRC) constitutes six local governments and around one-third of Perth’s metropolitan area encompassing a land area of about 2,100 square kilometres and an estimated population of 366,000 people in Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
A call for tender was released by EMRC in August 2017. After a thorough tender process, the EMRC decided that the best value for the disposal of its residual waste was presented by a consortium led by Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI).
The consortium that has developed and will deliver the project is led by HZI, the world leader in technology supply and turnkey delivery of energy-from-waste projects. HZI’s other partners in the project are New Energy Corporation (New Energy), a Perth-based waste-to-energy business which has been developing the East Rockingham site since 2013, and Tribe Infrastructure Group (Tribe), an international advisory and investment firm specialising in the development and financing of complex infrastructure transactions.
The EMRC will now meet with its individual member Councils to get approval for various agreements required under the arrangement with HZI. This process must be completed before the award of tender can be finalised and to allow the project to proceed and for waste deliveries to commence in 2021.
Design, Build, Operate and Finance of a 300,000 t/a EfW Plant
The plant will be located in East Rockingham in the Perth region. The Resource Recovery Facility will convert approximately 300,000 tonnes of waste per year into baseload renewable energy, producing 28MW of electricity at full capacity — enough to power 36,000 homes. The project represents a $400 million investment in the Perth area and will create 300 jobs during construction and 50 new full-time jobs throughout its 30+-year operating life and is expected to divert 96% residual waste from landfill.
The new plant will be built with Swiss clean-tech know-how and generate value locally. Around one third of the investment will flow back into local, regional and Australian businesses.
Besides the turn-key EfW plant delivery, HZI will operate and maintain the plant in a joint venture together with its local partner New Energy for at least 20 years.
Project Draws on Decades of Experience Worldwide
HZI will act as the technology provider, engineering and construction contractor and will execute a long-term operations and maintenance contract in joint venture with New Energy for the project. HZI’s proprietary moving grate combustion technology is the best of its kind globally and is essentially the technical foundation of the facility. HZI has successfully installed this technology in over 500 projects worldwide.
“HZI is a clear leader in the waste-to-energy market worldwide,” HZI CEO Franz-Josef Mengede said. “We see the ERMC contract as break-through in Australian market leading to further projects in Oceania. Importantly, we stay with the project from conception through construction, and, once the project is commissioned, we then lead the operations and maintenance activities for the life of the plant. This continuity will ensure Perth’s first energy-from-waste project is a successful one”.
The consortium is now working through pre-engineering, financing and the update of the site environmental approval. The project is scheduled to start construction in Q3 2018.
