Astaldi’s Polish waste win

Italian contractor the Astaldi Group has won a contract in Poland to build a plant to produce energy from the urban solid waste of the Bydgoszcz-Torun metropolitan area.

The contract has a total value of €95 million, and Astaldi has a 51% stake.

The contract calls for designing and building the civil and electromechanical works for the plant, which will consist of two incineration lines with a total nominal capacity of 180,000 tonnes per year of processed waste.

The plant will recover, transform, and convey electricity and heat for district heating, which will be introduced into the municipal grid serving the cities of Bydgoszcz and Torun, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The project also involves building stations to receive the waste, and for composting.

Work will begin in early 2013, and will take about three years.

The initiative was commissioned by Międzygminny Kompleks Unieszkodliwiania Odpadów, the company established by the Municipality of Bydgoszcz to manage urban waste.

The project is part of a broad programme funded by the European Union to build plants to produce energy through the transformation of waste, initiated recently in Poland for the country's major metropolitan areas.

Astaldi said Poland was a country of great interest for commercial development policies. It is already engaged in carrying out contracts for the construction of Line 2 of the Warsaw underground, worth €800 million, the Warsaw-Łodź railway line and the Łodź Fabryczna station, worth €350 million, and the Piotrkow-Tribunalski section of national road NR-8, €350 million.