Becon Consortium

In response to the requirements identified by arc21, the waste management group representing 6 Councils to the east of Northern Ireland, the Becon Consortium has developed plans to co-locate a Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plant, an Energy from Waste (EfW) plant at the Hightown Quarry site on the Boghill Road, Mallusk. The project is led by European waste management experts Indaver and is currently the subject of a planning application process. This £240m inward investment project will help Northern Ireland maximise the value from its residual (largely unrecyclable waste) waste which is currently either landfilled or exported at great financial and environmental cost to fuel energy from waste plants abroad. It will do this through firstly increasing recycling levels by up to 10% and then recovering energy from the remaining non-recyclable waste. It will use the latest technology and tried and tested methods widely used across the rest of the UK and Europe. The project will: - provide a sustainable, long term solution for the management of residual municipal waste in the arc21 area. - Create approximately 455 direct jobs at peak construction and support a significant number of additional jobs in the supply chain. - Create / sustain 337 direct and indirect jobs annually during the operational phase – generating £7.7m in total wages and contributing £24.7m of - Represent a significant inward investment in critical infrastructure which will result in a publicly owned asset. - Divert up to 250,000 tonnes of municipal waste from landfill per year, helping to meet UK and EU targets - Contribute directly to NI’s decarbonisation targets by the reduction of approximately 57,500 tonnes CO2 Equivalent per year relative to sending waste to landfill. - Export 18MW electricity to the National Grid – enough to power in excess of 30,000 homes. - Contribute to a green recovery by enabling other decarbonisation technologies such as hydrogen fuel production