Enval’s first commercial scale plant to be located at Alconbury

Located in the recently designated Enterprise Zone at Alconbury, the buildings will house the world’s first commercial scale plant utilising Enval’s patented process for the recycling of laminated plastic and aluminium packaging. The facility will be used to showcase this process and will become a centre of excellence for advanced resource recovery technologies.

Multi-national brand owners Nestlé, Kraft Foods Group and Mondelez International are part of a group of stakeholders that has backed the development of this facility, underlining the potential that Enval’s technology has demonstrated for improving the recyclability of flexible laminates.

The site will feature a fully operational, continuous process plant based on Enval’s award-winning Microwave Induced Pyrolysis system for recovering valuable materials from foil-containing flexible packaging. Enval intends to use the plant to demonstrate the new technology at full commercial scale to other potential users working in the recycling industry in the expectation that similar plants will be built in other parts of the UK and further afield.

“Enval is delighted to be locating our first commercial scale plant at the Enterprise Zone at Alconbury” said David Boorman, Enval’s Business Development Director. “We know of many companies within the resource recycling sector that have found the planning process difficult to navigate. Enval’s experience, with the support and expertise offered by our local authority partners and the Enterprise Zone itself, has been an extremely positive one.”

Enval is the first company to take advantage of the benefits of setting up on the Enterprise Zone at Alconbury, an area established specifically to generate economic and employment opportunities in the region around Huntingdon. Enval’s planning application was backed by the Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Enterprise Partnership (GCCP).

Cambridgeshire County Council approved the new development stating that Enval “will create the first job opportunities within the Alconbury Enterprise Zone”. Following consultation with Huntingdonshire District Council and the Stukeleys Parish Council, planning permission has been granted for conversion of two existing buildings on the former airfield to house a demonstration recycling plant which will divert laminated packaging, mainly sourced locally, away from landfill.

Enval is a modern environmental services company, focused on providing specialist solutions across industrial, commercial and municipal sectors to deliver value from waste. Enval’s technology offers a financially attractive and genuine recycling route for plastic/aluminium laminate packaging that has, to date, been unrecyclable. The award winning technology separates the material into its constituent components, producing clean aluminium ready for introduction into the secondary aluminium supply chain and hydrocarbons that can be used as fuel or chemical feedstock. The process offers a much more beneficial outcome for waste that would otherwise be sent to landfill or incinerated.

Enval, originally formed as a spin-out from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, is a privately funded company. In parallel to the technical development and commercialisation of its proprietary processes, Enval provides environmental life cycle analysis and technology consultancy, with particular emphasis on the pyrolytic recycling of complex flexible packaging materials. More information on Enval is available at www.enval.com.

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