Plans underway for energy plant fuelled by chicken waste

In 2005, Banham Poultry was granted consent to build the development at its former processing site at Bunns Bank industrial estate.

The £7-10 mln (US$13-20 mln; €9-13 mln) power plant will use state-of-the-art technology to turn feathers, heads, guts and other waste into electricity. It has the backing of UEA’s CRed carbon reduction campaign and approval from the Environment Agency.

“We have spent the time since the application was granted in investigating the best supplier for the equipment and the most viable way to build it, and are hopeful of starting the development in the very near future. There are a lot of things that are undecided at the moment, and we are looking at doing it possibly in conjunction with a third party,” said Banham Poultry director Robin Goram.

Goram said the cost of disposing of waste is one of the issues for meat producers who are having a tough time at present, and Banham Poultry has looked at alternative ways of tackling the problem. It has invested £2.5 mln (US$4.8 ; €3.4 mln) in a composting facility for poultry and green waste at Carleton Rode and is also building a new rendering plant near Norwich which is in the final stages of completion.

“The meat industry in the UK is in decline and unless we do something to safeguard it we will be a country of non-producers,” Goram stressed.