De Bilt, 6 December 2012 - In cooperation with waste and green energy experts from the German office, Grontmij Poland has now been awarded the full design of a newly to be built Waste-to-Energy (WtE) facility in Bialystok in the north-east of the country.

WtE is perhaps better described as energy recovery as it uses waste incineration to generate power and heat. In Bialystok Grontmij is designing a facility that will ultimately generate a nominal capacity of 15.5 t/h and an average caloric value of 7,500 kJ/kg. Work started in September this year. The main design has to be done in twelve months and the whole service will last until the end of 2015. The project fee for Grontmij will be around €2 million.

This project fits into our Group growth segment 'Energy', one of our key areas of expertise. Grontmij was awarded a similar project recently for the basic engineering design of a second-generation biofuel plant in Hardenberg, the Netherlands. The plant will process biodegradable organic waste material to generate 23 million m3 of biogas annually that is suitable for the Dutch market.

Growing importance
According to Maciej Chrzanowski, Country Managing Director of Grontmij in Poland: 'The production of bio-products, especially from waste, is growing in importance throughout our key European markets and beyond. Growing energy recovery is a positive development as it resolves some of the excess waste issues facing most countries while generating greener, non-fossil fuels to meet an ever-increasing demand for power. This is very much an area where the cooperation of our specialists from Poland and Germany brings huge know-how to the table.'