On Wednesday 9 October 2019 Gruppo IREN, through its subsidiary IREN Ambiente, has completed the acquisition of 100% of Territorio e Risorse S.r.l., the Entsorga Group subsisdiary that built and operated the Santhià composting plant. The plant, which currently handles 36,000 tonnes per year of source separated food waste, has obtained authorization from the Province of Vercelli for expanding its yearly processing capacity to 50,000 tons, including 40,000 tons of source separated food waste and 10,000 tons of green/yard waste, combining composting and anaerobic digestion in a single fully integrated plant.

The project execution, which will involve an additional investment of approximately 10 million euros and is scheduled for fall 2020, will be carried out with a “turnkey” contract by Entsorga applying the innovative Eisenmann semi-dry anerobic digestion technology, for which Entsorga in July 2019 obtained the exclusivity for Italy. The integrated plant will produce approximately 2.6 million cubic meters of Renewable Natural Gas per year, one of the most low carbon and most sustainable advanced biofuels.

“With this sale, we are completing an important milestone that in addition to marking the beginning of a strategic collaboration with Gruppo Iren, will allow us to build a fully integrated plant producing Renewable Natural Gas with an innovative, safe and flexible state of the art technology. With this expansion, we expect the Santhia’ plant to become a worldwide market benchmark in respect to integrated anaerobic digestion solutions for source separated organic waste“, said Pietro Cella Mazzariol, President of EntsorgaFin