Hitachi Zosen Inova appointed by Cory to build the Riverside 2 Waste to Energy facility
Bringing more sustainable waste management infrastructure to London and the South East of England, further reducing the need for landfill and increasing base-load energy security.
Following the Financial Close on the new Riverside 2 Waste to Energy facility, waste management business Cory Group has once again appointed Hitachi Zosen Inova to build a second energy recovery plant at its Belvedere site on the banks of the River Thames in East London. Once the new Riverside facility is operational in 2026, it will be able to treat c.650,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste while generating around 61 MWe of electricity (net) – enough domestically-produced energy to power over 140,000 UK households each year.
Belvedere, London, UK: Leading waste and recycling company Cory Group (Cory) has further strengthened its relationship with Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI) by awarding the Swiss green-tech company with the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract to build its second large-scale Waste to Energy (WtE) plant at Belvedere in the London Borough of Bexley. The site is adjacent to Cory’s existing facility, which was also built by HZI and has been operational since 2011. For HZI, this new project represents its eighteenth WtE project in the UK to date.
Construction will start in early January 2023, with the construction phase set to last nearly four years. The Riverside 2 facility was originally granted planning permission by a Development Consent Order in April 2020 and the plant’s owners have also secured an Environmental Permit to operate the plant ahead commercial operations which are set to start in 2026.
The plant will utilise HZI’s well-established moving grate technology, which has successfully been deployed across numerous operational WtE facilities in the UK, including the iconic Riverside 1 facility.
“HZI is delighted to have been awarded our second EPC contract with Cory to build the Riverside 2 facility. We thank the Cory leadership team for again choosing HZI to build the second facility, and the great cooperation in developing the project. The location of this new plant is significant for HZI as it will be adjacent to the first Riverside facility, which has now been safely and successfully operating for over a decade,” said Fabio Dinale, VP Business Development at HZI. “The new Riverside 2 facility will provide London and South East England with urgently needed WtE capacity, diverting residual waste away from being landfilled and helping to generate more reliable baseload energy in the UK.”
Dougie Sutherland, CEO of Cory, said: “I am delighted to be partnering with HZI once again to deliver this world class facility. We are making a significant investment to ensure that we process non-recyclable waste to the highest standards at a site that is enabled for carbon capture and hydrogen production. This facility is being built to deliver a world-class service for the communities, businesses and local authorities that really care about the environment.
“We are always looking for ways to mitigate our environmental impact. Riverside 2 will have the UK’s lowest NOx levels, will take refuse vehicles off our roads by transporting waste via the River Thames, and will be connected to one of the UK’s largest heat networks.”
Proprietary state-of-the-art technologies
The new infrastructure project will be built on land to the east of the existing Riverside 1 facility on the banks of the River Thames in the London Borough of Bexley. The new plant will be equipped with HZI’s own technologies such as the HZI reciprocating grate and state-of-the art boiler. Once operational in 2026, the two-line plant will generate electricity through a steam turbine which will meet strict emission directive requirements and satisfy the high demands placed on modern WtE facilities.
Continuing to build strong partnerships with Cory
The Riverside 2 plant is HZI’s second project with Cory and represents an extraordinary growth journey for the Swiss/Japanese greentech company as it embarks on its eighteenth WtE project in the UK and its fourth new scheme within a year to enter their construction phases (these include the Westfield, Rivenhall, South Clyde and now the Riverside 2 projects).