Waste recycling plant launched in Tuas

NES breaks ground for waste re-utilisation plant
Ronnie Lim Business Times 22 Dec 10;

WASTE recycling firm NewEarth Singapore (NES) - which counts mainboard-listed Beng Kuang Marine and Tuas Power among its partners - broke ground yesterday on its new $15 million waste re-utilisation plant at Tuas.

The facility will transform industrial waste into environmentally-safe construction and reclamation materials such as bricks and paving blocks.

Employing its patented 'crystallisation technology', NES will, for instance, collect coal bottom ash from Tuas Power's $2 billion biomass/clean coal plant starting up in end-2012 for this purpose.

The generating company is the majority 60 per cent stakeholder in the joint venture company NewEarth Pte Ltd which owns the technology. NewEarth Pte Ltd's other partner is Water and Environmental Technologies (a subsidiary of SGX-listed Beng Kuang).

NewEarth Pte Ltd, in turn, partnered MPA Ventures (part of the Maritime and Port Authority) and Surbana International Consultants to form NES which is building the plant.

The NES plant will be able to handle up to 85,000 tonnes per annum of industrial waste such as dredged marine clay, sludge, slag and ash collected from petrochemical, maritime, chemicals, manufacturing and other industries here. These will be treated before being converted into environmentally-safe construction products such as building bricks, paving blocks and synthetic aggregates.

Lim Kong Puay, the president and CEO of Tuas Power, said: 'NES offers a unique solution to companies that are seeking a safe and environmentally responsible means of waste disposal, by treating and converting their waste into products that can be used in road works, general construction and reclamation.'

He added: 'Tuas Power's biomass-clean coal cogeneration plant . . . will also be making use of the services of the NES facility. NES will be collecting coal bottom ash from the plant and converting it into synthetic aggregates that have applications in the construction industry, thus making our Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex an environmentally-sustainable project.'

At the groundbreaking, MPA CEO Lam Yi Young said that through its Maritime Innovation and Technology Fund, MPA has been involved with NewEarth's crystallisation technology 'right from the beginning - from inception, to R&D, to test-bedding, till its successful completion and move towards becoming a valuable business proposition'.

The technology is a five-year joint R&D effort among the various parties including NewEarth, MPA, Surbana and Nanyang Technological University.