  Background
Greencore Group plc is a major international manufacturer and supplier of food ingredients and prepared foods. Our sites are located in Ireland, Great Britain, The Netherlands and Belgium, and employ over 8,000 people.
The introduction of the Animal By-Products Regulations in 2005, the pre-treatment requirements for waste under the Landfill Directive, and a general desire to move away from landfill to more environmentally sustainable solutions, has led Greencore to commit to a large scale renewable energy from waste project. The EnCycle project will enable any waste food, or waste packaging that is contaminated with food (and therefore unsuitable for recycling), to be converted to a biofuel for the generation of renewable energy.
How the issue was tackled
The priorities for managing waste within Greencore are firmly established in line with the waste hierarchy, with a strong emphasis on waste minimisation, re-use and recycling where possible. A proportion of waste is still left requiring disposal and a number of solutions were fully evaluated as alternatives to landfill. These included composting, anaerobic digestion and thermal treatment processes.
In each case the major stumbling block came where mixed food and packaging components were present (e.g. ready meals or jars of sauce). Segregation of these materials is extremely difficult and inefficient, ruling out many processes such as composting and Anaerobic Digestion. The most suitable solution evaluated was the technology produced by Inetec, which converts organic waste streams to a stable, solid biofuel that can be used for renewable energy generation.
The Inetec process is a mechanical drying operation and is followed by a pyrolysis process (produced by Gardner Energy Management (GEM)). The GEM process converts the solid bio-fuel to a synthetic gas, which is rapidly cooled and cleaned before being used in a standard CHP plant to produce electricity and thermal energy.
Initial options for installing the plants at Greencore sites were hampered either by economies of scale, or by a reluctance to bring waste into a food manufacturing site for processing. The final solution that was developed involves a large scale energy from waste processing plant at Immingham, known as the Encycle project (led by Inetec).
Greencore were the first major food manufacturer to commit to the project, paving the way for the development of a large renewable energy plant, capable of producing 24MW of renewable electricity (enough for 39,000 homes) and diverting 180,000 tonnes of waste away from landfill each year. The plant is due to be operational in mid to late 2008, and will be the first of a planned network of facilities designed to service all geographical regions of the UK.
Benefits and impacts
Once operational, Greencore will send virtually zero waste to landfill in the UK, and will be responsible for the generation of significant quantities of renewable energy, which in turn will substitute for generation from fossil fuels. A further benefit of the process is the additional recycling that will be enabled by the Inetec process. Whereas jars of sauce were previously being sent to landfill, the Inetec process enables not only the sauce to be converted to biofuel, but also enables the simple separation of the glass jars and metal caps for recycling.
Advice to others
The Encycle project provides a viable solution to many waste streams that have historically been difficult to deal with in a sustainable manner. By developing an independent processing facility, the solution can be available to all sizes of company in all parts of the UK as further plants are developed.
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