Preferred tenderers announced for south-east Melbourne organics procurement

The Metropolitan Waste Management Group (MWMG) has successfully facilitated a competitive tendering process for the provision of organic waste processing services on behalf of eight participating councils in the south-east of Melbourne.

The new contract will service the needs of Bayside, Cardinia, Casey, Frankston, Glen Eira, Greater Dandenong, Kingston and Monash City Councils for a period of 15 years, managing the councils’ ever-increasing volumes of green waste. It will also offer councils the choice to allow food scraps in kerbside green waste in the future, further increasing the waste that can be diverted from landfill.

Three companies have been announced as the preferred tenderers for the contract:

• Sacyr Industrial, an international engineering company with experience in waste management and organics processing;
• Veolia Environmental Services, an Australian waste management provider;
• Transpacific, a company with experience in organic waste processing throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Transpacific’s Post Collections General Manager, Ben Sawley, said Transpacific’s “strong partnerships with the south-eastern councils located near our Clayton facilities, and also with Mornington Peninsula Shire Council, [have] seen us successfully process approximately 100,000 metric tonnes of green waste per year”.

He said the company’s waste and recycling collections arm, Cleanaway, “will continue to service a number of the south-east councils through its kerbside organics collections … [which] will then be delivered to our locally based facilities in Clayton for pre-processing”.

The outcome of the tender process is expected to lead to the construction of a new cutting-edge, in-vessel composting facility capable of processing 100,000 tonnes of organic waste by Sacyr. Smaller volumes of organic waste will be sent to the existing facilities currently being operated by Veolia and Transpacific.

Prior to finalisation of the contract, all three companies will need to secure any necessary planning and environmental works approvals. Information sessions and the formal approval process will commence in the New Year.