Willen BiogasCattlegate Farm, Cattlegate Road, Enfield, Greater London, United Kingdom

As Farmers with diverse business interests we have always wanted to embrace new technology with respect to the environment and the rural issues. As with all farmers fertilizer and fuel represents a high cost for farming businesses and being on heavy London clay we want to reduce the cost of cultivations and minimise the use of manmade fertilizers.

With the proximity to one of the biggest population centres of the Northern Hemisphere we focused on waste arisings in London and the need to give further use to those waste streams. In 2008 we started to evaluate the possibility of a foodwaste fed Anaerobic Digestion facility and could soon see that enough foodwaste to feed the size of plant we envisaged was readily available, this was also confirmed by LRS independent consultants for waste arisings on different radius mileages.

We submitted a very thorough planning application for the Anaerobic Digestion facility aswell as an increased capacity greenwaste composting application, taking us from the site which has been operational since 2009 catering for 5,000 tonnes per annum to 25,000 tonnes per annum. Again with the greenwaste it was demonstrated that arisings available within a reasonable radius of the farm would exceed our target volumes.

At the beginning of 2012 both planning applications for Anaerobic Digestion and Greenwaste projects gained planning consent and the aggregated volume between the two sites means over 50,000 tonnes of organic material now has the ability to be diverted from landfill and to find further use, either into electricity production or for use as a growing medium to help grow strong and healthy plants with minimal reliance on manmade fertilizers for food production back into the food chain. This is a huge success and aims to achieve the recycling and renewable government guidelines.

With planning secured Willen Biogas Limited was formed to identify the renewable and recycling projects and push them forward without interfering with the core business. The pathway to secure funding was a challenge and required some innovative thinking in what we wanted to achieve as our ultimate goal, but confidence grew with our funding partners and we are now at the forefront of an amazing recycling opportunity with exceptional support from our project partners enabling us to embrace best available technologies. Willen Biogas is proud of its achievements to be able to offer one of the most complete recycling opportunity for a broad range of organic waste streams 13 miles from the centre of London.