Almost 30 local businesses in Yorkshire and the Midlands have been awarded contracts to provide essential services to the construction of the new £300m Multifuel Energy facility at Ferrybridge Power Station.
The plant, which is being developed by Multifuel Energy Ltd (MEL), a joint venture between Ferrybridge Power Station’s owners SSE and Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., is expected to be operational in 2015. Around 300 construction jobs will be created by the project in addition to an estimated £10 million of additional business for local hotels, restaurants and other service providers.
The contract awards follow a ‘Meet the Buyer’ event held in Castleford last summer by MEL and the project’s main contractor Hitachi Zosen Inova with its civil engineering supplier Sisk.
Mark McCarthy, Managing Director of MEL said: “MEL and Hitachi Zosen Inova are committed to sourcing local and regional suppliers at all stages of this multi-million pound project, which will create hundreds of jobs during its construction. The ‘Meet the Buyer’ event was a huge success and it’s great to see that some of the local businesses we met last summer are now involved in building the facility.”
Slipform Structures Ltd, a Leeds-based specialist in the construction technique used to quickly construct large-scale buildings such as towers and dams from concrete, has been awarded a contract to construct a waste bunker for the Multifuel plant. The work will be completed in early June and will involve approximately 150 workers.
Jim Marley, Construction Director at Slipform, commented: “We are very excited to be involved in this prestigious West Yorkshire project. As a local employer, it’s a welcome boost. We fully intend to contribute to the benefits being brought to the local area by utilising our local supply chain and our locally based labour force.”
The Multifuel Energy plant is expected to be operational in 2015. Once completed, the facility will have a generating capacity of 68MW and will use a range of fuel sources, potentially including waste-derived fuels, biomass and waste wood.