Waste to Energy Plants
Across three of the UK's premier energy-from-waste plants, two in Scotland and one on Teesside, Palmers delivered the industrial access that helped turn residual waste into grid-scale power. Decades of industrial scaffolding experience kept major energy projects on time and on budget.
Sector context
Energy-from-waste is a fast-growing part of the UK's industrial sector, built on the heavy industrial construction Palmers has served for decades. Palmers secured access contracts on three premier plants at once, providing the scale and variety of safe scaffolding these projects demand.
The challenge
Each plant is a major industrial build with a demanding programme and a wide variety of structures and elevations.
- Levenseat, Lanark (client M+W Group UK): a £111m project combining an energy-from-waste plant and an adjacent Materials Recycling Facility (MRF), designed to generate 123 MWe.
- Viridor's Dunbar ERF, East Lothian: a £177m Interserve Construction project central to Scotland's zero-waste, circular-economy plans.
- Port Clarence, Teesside: a renewable energy plant with capacity to treat an estimated 325,000 tonnes of waste wood a year, built by Lagan Construction Group with Eco2.
The Palmers solution
Palmers provided a mix of tube-and-fitting and system scaffolding tailored to each site, supporting clients from early design through erection to striking.
- At Levenseat, the scaffolding supported a plant expected to recycle more than a million tonnes of material over its lifetime, with an MRF processing 42 tonnes of waste an hour and annual capacity over 200,000 tonnes.
- At Dunbar, access supported a facility designed to divert 300,000 tonnes of residual waste from landfill a year and generate around 30 MW of base-load renewable energy, enough for roughly 39,000 homes, while supporting at least 350 construction jobs.
- At Port Clarence, Palmers supported a plant generating around 40 MW of power, roughly enough for 75,000 homes across Tees Valley and the North East.
The outcome
Palmers delivered economic, versatile industrial access on three major energy-from-waste plants and helped keep essential energy projects on time and on budget, deepening its position in the growing waste-to-energy market.
From the site team.
The scale and wide variety of safe scaffolding required on contracts like these makes Palmers the perfect choice. We have the experience, equipment and excellence to deal with whatever is required, from the early design phases, through erection to striking. This all helps keep these exciting, essential contracts on time and on budget.
Palmers Business and Project Development Director