The £165m park will be developed at Protos and extends beyond already consented plans for a plastic to hydrogen plant also to be built at the site.
Peel’s strategic energy and resource hub near Ellesmere Port will feature innovative processing and treatment technologies to make the most of up to 367,500 tonnes of mixed recyclables and plastic every year.
Key facilities
- A Materials Recycling Facility: separate out dry mixed recyclable materials (such as glass, paper, cans and card) into different waste streams and send them for recycling.
- Plastics Recycling Facility One: plastic from the MRF and mixed plastics separated into different plastic types. The separated plastic will either go to PRF2 or the PET recycling plant already consented at Protos.
- Plastics Recycling Facility Two (PRF2): pre-sorted plastic from PRF1 will be washed and processed into flaked plastic for reuse.
- Polymer Laminate Recycling Facility: plastic (such as crisp packets and baby food pouches) will be heated, the plastic will break down into an oil for reuse in manufacturing new products with the aluminum recovered for recycling.
- Hydrogen refueling station: hydrogen from the consented plastic to hydrogen facility used to supply up to 1000kg of hydrogen per day to vehicles, sufficient to fuel approximately 20 HGVs from outside Protos and a similar number of internal HGV movements that will be servicing operations within Protos.
Peel NRE now plans to work with potential operators to bring forward construction on site.
Richard Barker, development director at Peel NRE, part of Peel L&P, said: “It’s great to get unanimous backing for the Plastic Park – a UK first that will underpin the circular economy in the North West.
“It’s imperative we deliver creative solutions to the UK’s plastic problem. This project clusters recycling technologies in one place so that we can make the most of a whole range of plastic materials arriving on site, avoiding the need to ship them to different facilities around the region.”
