Major Resource Recovery Infrastructure grant project summaries

Boral Cement Limited

Berrima kiln chloride bypass – $4,684,425

This project involves the installation of a chloride bypass in the kiln preheater to allow for increased use of solid waste derived fuel (SWDF) to further offset the use of fossil fuels. The Berrima cement SWDF system was commissioned in 2018 and has a material handling capacity of up to 20 tonnes of SWDF each hour. However, the kiln process without a chloride bypass is limited to a maximum of 12 tonnes per hour of SWDF or 55,000 tonnes each year. Boral will increase its use of SWDF up to 30% of its heat energy requirement This will allow the current SWDF system a throughput capacity of up to 100,000 tonnes each year.

Circular Plastics Australia (PET) Pty Ltd

PET Recycling Plant: circular food-grade PET – $4,800,000 

The joint venture between Pact Group Holdings Ltd, Cleanaway Waste Management Ltd, Asahi Beverages and Coca Cola Euro Pacific Partners will build a PET flaking and pelletising facility to support the circular economy for plastics in New South Wales. This facility will produce premium quality, food-grade, recycled PET (rPET) pellets for use by major Australian brand owners. Circular Plastics Australia has access to high-quality PET feedstock through the Tomra/Cleanaway joint venture which operates the NSW Container Deposit Scheme. Circular Plastics Australia also has feedstock available through the kerbside recycling system via Cleanaway and third-party material recovery facility (MRF) operators. This enables the production of high-quality food-grade rPET to meet the strong local and international demand. Circular Plastics Australia will apply a well-established international recycling process using equipment from leading European technology providers to the Australian market. At full capacity, this project will process approximately 28,000 tonnes of plastics into rPET each year.

SUEZ Recycling and Recovery Australia

Chullora fibre beneficiation facility – $4,800,000

Historically, recycled fibre (paper and cardboard) was exported to China and other Asian countries; however, due to contamination concerns these export markets have become drastically restricted. As a result, some recycled paper and cardboard is currently being landfilled. Local paper mills also receive recycled fibre but are significantly tightening their allowable contamination levels. SUEZ will build a fibre beneficiation facility in Sydney, which will process 100,000 tonnes each year of recycled paper and cardboard. The facility will de-contaminate and sort the fibre into clean cardboard, newspaper and mixed paper which will meet the criteria for sale to local paper mills.

SUEZ Recycling and Recovery Australia

Chullora plastics beneficiation facility – $3,305,000

Historically, recycled plastics were exported to China and other Asian countries; however, due to contamination concerns these export markets have become drastically restricted with recycled plastics being stockpiled or landfilled. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) have agreed to ban exports of recyclable waste from Australia. To address the lack of local plastic processing capacity, SUEZ will build a plastics beneficiation facility in Sydney, which will process 16,000 tonnes each year of mixed plastics separated from household recycling and general waste bins. The plastic will be sorted, washed and flaked to produce valuable plastic flakes for sale to local plastics manufacturers.

Affective Services Australia Pty Ltd

Canterbury Road construction and demolition recycling facility – $2,000,000

This project will construct a recycling facility that can process 180,000 tonnes of construction and demolition waste per year. The facility, located in Kembla Grange, will process mixed and source-separated construction and demolition waste into a range of recycled products including aggregate, manufactured soil and mulch. The facility is expected to achieve a recovery rate of 88% of the incoming material. The facility has full development approval and this funding will assist with completion of earthworks, construction of a warehouse building for additional processing and product manufacturing and purchase of processing equipment to enable the facility to fully commence operations. The facility will help boost much-needed recycling infrastructure in the Illawarra region.

Albury City Council

AWMC C&I and C&D MRF – $2,021,947

This project will enable council to build a dry commercial and industrial (C&I) and construction and demolition (C&D) recycling facility to process and recover more material. This infrastructure will expand the tonnage and range of materials recovered, and provide environmental, social and economic benefits, including achieving the region's ambition of halving waste to landfill. The facility is designed to receive and process both C&I and C&D waste.

Polytrade Recycling

Sydney glass beneficiation plant – $4,999,039

Polytrade will construct a glass beneficiation facility in Sydney. The plant will receive glass from domestic and commercial recycling collections after it has been separated from mixed recycling streams at material recovery facilities. The inputs will be mixed broken glass, which will be processed into saleable products: 8-50 mm colour-sorted glass, 3-8 mm colour-sorted glass and 0-3 mm mixed glass. This plant will create products with robust local markets and ensure that in post-consumer glass is recycled.

Polytrade Recycling

Plastics processing plant – $4,999,173

China's decision to prohibit the import of recycled plastics unless they are in the form of clean, separated, pelletised resins means that Australian material recovery facilities must seek local markets for separated plastics. Polytrade will install equipment to sort, wash, flake and extrude mixed plastics at their existing material recovery facility at Rydalmere. This new equipment will process mixed plastics into pelletised clean resins that can be sold to local markets, and that also meet the strict new criteria for export to China.

Remondis Australia Pty Ltd

Kurnell resource recovery facility – $5,000,000

Remondis and Breen Resources are forming a joint venture to build a resource recovery facility at Kurnell, within the Southern and Eastern Sydney catchment. The facility will recover a range of commodities from the light dry waste fraction that is currently landfilled. The facility will recover burnable materials with high calorific value to be exported and used in cement kilns as a fossil fuel substitute. The non-burnable material will be used by Breen to produce other recycled landscaping and building products.

Tyrecycle Pty Ltd

NSW rubber crumb and TDF plant facility – $1,500,000

Tyrecycle will build a new facility to process up to 40,000 tonnes per year of waste tyres. 19,000 tonnes will be converted into rubber crumb and granules and the remaining 21,000 tonnes into high value tyre derived fuel (TDF). Crumb and granule manufacturing allow reuse of a valuable resource, resulting in improved environmental outcomes for New South Wales. Tyrecycle processes 27% of the tyres that reach end of life in Australia each year. The proposed project will enhance capacity for processing NSW tyres for local use. Tyrecycle will increase its NSW capacity to meet ongoing demand for crumb and granule end products as an increasing number of end-of-life tyres becoming available.

BioCoal Group Pty Ltd

Earthcare SRF manufacturing facility – $2,645,000

BioCoal will develop a new facility in the Newcastle region to recover up to 28,000 tonnes of organic material from kerbside residual waste each year. This facility will produce a product with high carbon content, suitable for use in the steel industry.

Dial-A-Dump (EC) Pty Ltd

Geneses Xero Waste commercial and industrial waste plant – $5,000,000

Dial-A-Dump will establish a new $20 million facility in Blacktown with the capacity to process 455,000 tonnes of mixed commercial and industrial waste each year. The facility will initially process about 126,000 tonnes a year and the amount is expected to grow steadily over the following years.

The project will recover materials to be processed for a ‘higher and better’ use including plastics, metals, timber, paper and cardboard. Once energy can be obtained from the waste facility, Dial-a-Dump will eventually recover up to 89% of all waste processed here.

Doyle Bros

Doyle Bros commercial and industrial materials recovery facility – $1,000,000

Doyle Bros will establish a new material recovery facility in Fairfield to process around 17,000 tonnes of dry commercial and industrial waste each year. This facility will achieve 70% recovery by expanding its current paper and cardboard recycling operations to also recover mixed metals and plastics. This project will initially divert around 11,900 tonnes per annum of material from landfill. The residual waste may be turned into a refuse-derived fuel suitable for generating energy, once an energy-from-waste facility becomes available.

Newcastle City Council

Summerhill commercial and industrial dirty material recovery facility – $1,937,500

The City of Newcastle currently landfills between 50,000 and 70,000 tonnes of solid waste each year from commercial and industrial sources. The City of Newcastle will establish a new specialised facility to manage mixed waste, including food waste. It is expected to recover over 19,500 tonnes per annum (around 28%) of dry recyclables from this material, such as paper, cardboard, metals and plastics.

PGM Refiners Pty Ltd

NSW next-generation e-waste recycling facility – $1,050,000

PGM Refiners will establish a next-generation e-waste recycling facility in Western Sydney. This facility will recycle over 13,800 tonnes of e-waste each year, processing challenging materials such as flat-panel displays and safely managing products containing hazardous mercury.

Relivit Holdings Pty

Relivit recycling resource recovery project, Nowra – $1,300,000

Relivit will construct and operate a $10.9 million facility to process up to 30,000 tonnes of absorbent hygiene waste each year, including nappies and adult hygiene products. This facility will recover plastic, paper fibre and super absorbent polymers to be sold into large existing markets. Markets include animal litter, wood substitute and plastic commodity markets.

ResourceCo RRF Pty Ltd

ResourceCo processed engineered fuel facility – $5,000,000

ResourceCo will develop a new facility at Eastern Creek with capacity to recover 110,000 tonnes of dry mixed commercial and industrial waste each year. The facility is expected to achieve 95% diversion from landfill. It will recover metals, timber and more than 57,000 tonnes of refuse-derived fuel for use in energy generation. 

Boral Cement Ltd

Boral Berrima cement kiln alternative fuel – $4,084,821

Boral will replace 20% of the coal it currently uses to generate energy at its Berrima cement works with waste timber and tyres. Using technology that is already being successfully applied in cement manufacturing in Europe, the $9.2 million project will have a built recycling capacity of 80,000 tonnes a year, turning wood and chipped tyre waste into an alternative fuel and reducing emissions by 34,000 tonnes a year. The upgrade involves installing plant and machinery to feed the refuse-derived fuel to the kiln as well as modifications to the exhaust system. Boral’s Berrima cement works supplies around 60% of the state’s demand for cement, mainly for use in concrete. It contributes around $60 million a year to the NSW economy and directly employs 130 people.

Global Renewables Australia

Eastern Creek UR–3R facility resource-derived fuel circuit and expansion – $5,000,000

Global Renewables will build a new refuse-derived fuel facility at its Eastern Creek UR–3R site to turn the residual waste that is currently landfilled into an alternative fuel. (UR–3R is ‘Urban Resource – Reduction, Recovery and Recycling’, a patented process.) The new fuel facility, along with other elements of the project, will increase recycling capacity at the site by 40,000 tonnes a year. Further upgrades include covering the compost maturation area and increasing heavy-metals recovery. The facility currently employs 80 people and processes 220,000 tonnes of household kerbside waste a year, recovering more than 65%. Jobs will be created during construction and 9 full-time jobs will be created once the new facility is up and running.

Great Lakes Council

Tuncurry Resource Recovery Park – $1,000,000

The closure of Tuncurry landfill will see it transformed into a resource-recovery park to boost recycling and reduce the amount of waste being sent to the Minimbah landfill that will replace it. This project involves the construction of a waste transfer station at Tuncurry that will enable incoming waste to be separated and sorted into categories such as scrap metals, household recyclables, appliances and second-hand building materials, tyres and landscape supplies, to maximise recovery. The existing ‘Tip Shop’ will also be expanded to increase reuse and sale of reusable items. The new facility will have a built recycling capacity of 7,000 tonnes a year.

Kimbriki Resource Recovery Centre

KEE landfill resource recovery facility – $1,175,000

The Kimbriki Environmental Enterprises (KEE) landfill resource recovery facility will divert a further 14,000 tonnes of waste from landfill each year by boosting the capacity to recover even more household and business waste coming to the site. The project consists of three components:

• a small-vehicle drop-off centre where people can unload by hand self-sorted recyclables, including materials that can be re-used and resold at the Buy Back Centre
• a small-vehicle waste-transfer station, where drivers can unload small loads of mixed waste for further sorting
• a large-vehicle drop-off and mechanised waste-sorting facility to pre-sort mixed waste using mobile machinery, followed by automated and manual extraction of the valuable resources that can be re-used or recycled.

Once operational, the upgrades are expected to generate 16 full-time jobs.

OneSteel Recycling

Project advantage: Hexham stage 2 – $2,000,000

Steel currently accounts for 75% by weight of the recovery from cars, whitegoods and other metals fed into OneSteel Recycling’s Hexham shredder. In this project, the remaining component (shredder floc) will be processed to remove the non-ferrous metals, saving approximately 20,000 tonnes of waste from going to landfill each year.

Shellharbour City Council

Dunmore resource recovery redevelopment (R3) – $2,050,250

The Dunmore resource recovery redevelopment consists of 2 phases that when completed, will enable 75% of the waste received at the site to be diverted from landfill, amounting to 243,000 tonnes over 20 years. This funding will support phase 1 of the project, which is an upgrade to the existing transfer station and the charity-run Revolve Centre. Phase 2 proposes an enclosed organics processing facility for food and garden waste.

Veolia Environmental Services (Australia) Pty Ltd

Camellia recycling centre – $5,000,000

Veolia’s Camellia recycling venture will be Sydney’s first purpose-built facility to recycle commercial and industrial waste. It will process up to 150,000 tonnes of non-putrescible waste from business and industry each year, tapping into advances in technology to recover 50% of the recyclable material from a mixed waste stream. The $22.4 million project will recover paper/cardboard, metals, aggregates, plastics and timber and have the capacity to produce refuse-derived fuel suitable for future energy-from-waste generation.