EDS Environmental And CGCS/SMR Premixd

01 June, 2007

Setting up an SMR operation to take on type-one in the utilities industry.

The message from CGCS and SMR Premixd is simple. Utility companies should use their own excavation waste as type-one material and save on a range of costs. It is a message EDS Environmental took on board.

“Waste creators can save on tipping charges, importing materials for reinstatement, transport costs and paying the aggregates levy.

“Instead of firms having to buy type-one from a quarry we take a waste producer’s excavations away, process them and add the SMR to create a type-one replacement. It’s a great solution,” explains EDS recycling manager Andy Bareham.

EDS is using the CGCS/SMR Premixd solution at a number of its operations and has many more in the pipeline. It is offering Stabilised Material for Reinstatement (SMR) for firms such as utilities companies. And it is not alone.

Tarmac is also working through the numbers and opening up sites as hydraulically bound materials (HBM) become increasingly accepted among the highways authorities and utilities companies of the UK as a substitute for traditional type-one product.

There are a couple of key drives behind the increasing popularity of SMR. Firstly the aggregates levy keeps driving up the cost of type-one. The levy is set to rise to £1.95 a tonne from next year pushing up the price of type-one further.

Secondly, landfill restrictions are getting tighter. The waste acceptance criteria (WAC) framework is starting to tighten up what materials can be landfilled where, making highways arisings more costly to dump. A problem exacerbated by the £8.00 a tonne landfill tax hikes from next year.

Sites such as EDS offer solutions to these growing costs by offering to pick up utility and highways firms’ excavation waste, screen it down to size, mix it with a powder containing 70% cement and 30% polymer-based binder and then transport it back for reinstatement into the ground it came from.

The powder comes from SMR Premixd’s Exeter-based manufacturing plant. Costs vary by volume. A pallet of 40, 25kg bags is £9.95 a bag while 20 pallets falls to £7.95 a bag. A pallet of three bags weighing 300kg each is £118 a bag falling to £94 a bag for 20 pallets. A 1,000kg bag, taking up one pallet, is £380. For 20 pallets it falls to £295.

SMR Premixd’s Clive Holloway also acts as agent for CGCS in Lincolnshire, which provides The Screen Machine Achiever shredder and trommel needed to produce the end product. It costs around £82,000 and has a throughput of around 120tph with a 7m³ feed.

If you feel the market in your area can only sustain smaller quantities of SMR, then CGCS also offers a Might II model small enough to be towed by a 4X4. It is priced at £38,000 and if material is pre-screened its throughput is 40tph. With a live head this drops to 25tph.

HAUC specs demand type-one be -75mm. At EDS, Bareham has invested in a screen taking off the 75mm-10mm which is fed into the Achiever. He also bought a crusher to take care of oversize. Overall it is a system that appears to be working.

“Interest in the product and service is growing well as costs continue to grow for clients. The local authorities are slow to act but you can feel the pressure coming through to them from central government so it is only a matter of time.

“Linking up with Clive and his SMR solution was the right way forward. He offers knowledge of how government works and markets his product round the country to raise awareness of what it can do,” he says.

The Anglia Highways Authorities and Utilities Committee (HAUC) recently adopted a white paper from Three Valleys Water’s Eddie Owen outlining a protocol for the creation of SMR for use in highways and utilities jobs.

Owen says the adoption by the Anglia HAUC opens the way for other HAUC’s across the UK to follow suit. If this happens then there will suddenly be a large demand for SMR products across the UK.