Residents' fears are allayed as compost plant gets processing

8:40am Friday 4th July 2008

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AS CONTROVERSY over the plans for a new in-vessel composting facility near Tormarton rumbles on, the brand new Bioganix plant at Sharpness burst into life at the beginning of May with barely a murmer from the outside world.

Venture into Docks territory, and it's hard to find anyone who knows where the plant is, let alone what it does.

Yet the £4.3 million plant at Sharpness covers 55,000 sq ft and is capable of processing 48,000 tonnes of organic waste a year - making it one of the biggest in-vessel composting facilities in the UK.

Managing director Nick Helme is pleased with the way the composter has been received.

"We take all sorts of waste - basically anything with food in it and raw meats through to shredded paperwork of a sensitive nature.

"We are just like a larger version of your back garden compost bin, really, and we need to have the same sort of mix of wet and dry components for the process to work.

"There must be a balance of waste because you can't cheat nature."

The prospect of terrible smells was one of the biggest worries local residents had, but there is no stench surrounding the units.

"Once we've had a delivery it gets sealed off until it leaves us as compost at the end, which is why you can't smell anything, " explains Nick.

"It only takes four to five days for the process to happen - you get the same amount in a few days as would take weeks at home."

Take a trip outside the plant and you can see the air scrubbers', which are the reasons why there is not even a whiff of anything rotten in the surrounding environment.

Oliver O'Toole is the operations and technical director at the plant and oversaw the construction of this, Bioganix' Mark III' odour management system.

"One third of our capital was spent on this building, which is completely sealed under pressure," says Oliver.

"This is where aerobic bacteria eat' the smells. It's like a huge hydroponic garden in the building - a bio-filter where the air is sent slowly upwards until it is pure again. It's a completely natural, closed-loop process.

"What I think is so great about what we are doing here," adds Oliver proudly, "is that our compost, which has already been pre-sold to farmers for the rest of the year, currently displaces one application per year of fossil-based fertiliser and makes us about carbon neutral as a business. Now that can't be bad, can it?"