Food waste recycler celebrates three major milestones

Business is on the up for Gloucestershire-based food waste recycler Andigestion which has recently celebrated injecting a record 11 million cubic metres of biomethane gas into the national grid - enough energy to power 10,000 homes for a year.

The gas is produced by the anaerobic digestion process which breaks down both commercial and domestic food waste collected from all over Gloucestershire and the South West.  It is then taken to the company’s recycling plant at Bishops Cleeve near Cheltenham, where up to 34,000 tonnes of food waste are processed each year.

Andigestion also recently commissioned a new 1,000 cubic metre mixing tank at its Bishops Cleeve site, enabling the company to double its capacity for food waste recycling, and notched up 100,000 food waste wheelie-bin collections from commercial customers.

Mike Lowe, Operations Director, said: "Despite the challenges of COVID-19 and lockdown, we’re very pleased and proud that we’ve been able to respond to the increasing demand for food waste recycling so positively."

Andigestion Ltd is part of the Maidenhead-based Summerleaze Group, a leading investor and innovator in the renewable energy sector.

Founded in 1928, Summerleaze is a privately-owned company, whose origins are in the field of mineral extraction. The company has diversified substantially since then, into fields such as waste management and renewable energy.

Andigestion was established in 2004 to develop and commercialise anaerobic digestion as a viable waste-treatment technology. The company began by steadily converting its Holsworthy site in Devon to process food waste instead of farm slurries and  subsequently developed the Cambridge research plant. Andigestion opened its second site, representing a £12 million investment, at Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham in 2015, at the landfill site operated by Grundon Waste Management. Andigestion’s biggest contract is with Gloucestershire County Council.

Anaerobic Digestion is an energy-from-waste process by which organic matter, such as animal or food waste, is broken down to produce biogas, electricity or fertiliser. This process happens in a sealed, oxygen-free tank called an anaerobic digester.

Read our interview with Summerleaze Group boss Peter Prior on pages 102-104 of our CEO compilation magazine