October 2 (SeeNews) - France's Suez has said it signed an agreement to invest 300 million euro ($352.1 million) in the construction of a waste-to-energy facility in Belgrade in consortium with I - Environment Investments Limited, a subsidiary of Japan's Itochu.
The project will allow the Belgrade city government to close and remediate the Vinca landfill and generate over 80 MW of renewable heat and electricity, Suez said in a statement on Friday.
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The waste-to-energy facility will be built by a 50/50 joint-venture of Suez and Itochu and will have an installed power production capacity of 25 MW and heat production capacity of 56 MW, processing 340,000 tonnes of waste annually, the French company said.
In addition, a dedicated facility will process 200,000 tonnes of construction and demolition waste per year. A new waste disposal designed in accordance with European standards will dispose of residual waste pending the development of the recycling policy currently rolled out by city authorities, Suez noted.
Following completion of the construction, managed by French industrial engineering contractor and equipment manufacturer CNIM and Serbian civil engineering group Energoprojekt [BEL:ENHL], and planned in 2021, the facilities will be operated by Suez for a 25-year term under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) agreement.
"The Belgrade Waste PPP is a landmark and pathfinder project for a region which has huge investment needs in infrastructure, in particular in the environment sector. We are convinced that Public-Private Partnerships are among the best solutions to combine technical, financial and contractual performance and we are proud that the City of Belgrade selected us to bring the model to this part of Europe," the senior executive vice-president of Suez, Marie-Ange Debon, said in the statement.
Belgrade city government said in July that a consortium of Suez and Itochu was the only bidder in a tender for a public-private partnership for the processing of urban waste in Vinca. The tender was organised with the support of International Finance Corporation (IFC).