A UK petfood processing company will open an anaerobic digestion plant in September, which will be able to recycle 45,000 metric tons of food waste each year and produce 2.8 Mw of renewable electricity and heat.

Prosper De Mulder’s £12m (US$19.13 million) plant will create 35 to 40 new jobs and will allow the company to move away from using landfills to dispose of food waste.

“We have been looking at anaerobic digestion for five or six years but previously the incentives weren’t there to do it,” said commercial director Philip Simpson. “Now, the landfill price is coming up and there are green incentives and the feed-in tariff to make it more worthwhile.”