Suez to supply Cemex cement plant with solid recovered fuel from new UK facility

France-based Suez Environnement and Cemex in the United Kingdom have opened a new solid recovered fuel facility in Rugby, U.K., that will produce SRF for the Cemex cement plant in Rugby.

The companies officially opened the Rugby Solid Recovered Fuel facility on September 18, 2015.

The SRF facility, owned and operated by Suez, will supply the Cemex Rugby facility’s cement kiln with a direct replacement for fossil fuel, manufactured with regionally sourced waste from across Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and the wider Midlands Area, Cemex reports.

The fuel, which Suez calls Climafuel, replaces traditional coal as an energy supply, Suez says. The waste and recycling company will supply Cemex with up to 240,000 metric tons of the fuel every year to help meet the energy needs of the Cemex plant and improve its environmental performance.

The Rugby Solid Recovered Fuel Facility will produce up to 200,000 metric tons annually for the Cemex facility, with the balance of around 40,000 metric tons produced from Suez’s SRF plant in Birmingham, U.K.

The Rugby Solid Recovered Fuel Facility was built as part of a 25-year contract between Suez and Cemex, signed in 2012. Through the partnership between the two companies, Suez leased land opposite the kiln from Cemex in 2013, and construction of the £18 million ($28 million) fuel facility began in 2014. The commissioning of the process equipment took place earlier in 2015.

The SRF facility can process up to 300,000 metric tons of residual waste each year and around 70 percent of the input material comes from businesses in the region, while the remaining 30 percent is household waste.

According to Suez, the majority of this waste would otherwise be destined for landfill but the SRF manufacturing process enables the company to extract recyclable materials, such as plastics, card and metals, which would be too contaminated to viably recycle.

We are very pleased to officially open the Rugby Solid Recovered Fuel Facility and formally mark the start of this long term partnership between Suez and Cemex,” says Jean-Marc Boursier, senior executive vice president of SUEZ in charge of the recycling and waste recovery division for Europe. “With the 240,000 tonnes of SRF produced by this site, the Group now supplies 1.1 million tonnes of SRF worldwide.”

Fernando Gonzalez, CEO of Cemex, says, “This long term partnership with Suez in the UK reinforces one of the main drivers of our strategy: ensuring that sustainability is fully embedded in every aspect of our business.”