Bord na Mona

Source: Energy Digital

Date :20/03/2007 00:00:00

Bord na Mona: Strategy change raises the profile of Bord na Mona Environmental

Greener technology is enhancing Bord na Mona Environmental UK’s capability and competitiveness, as Director Bob Maloney explained to Robert Pols

Written by Robert Pols & Produced by Ben Weaver

As enterprises strive to meet new regulations and improve their environmental performance, Bord na Mona Environmental is well placed to solve their problems whilst growing its own business in a readjusted direction. Though it’s currently the smallest of the Irish group’s divisions, its monitoring services, consultancy, waste water treatment and air pollution solutions are strategically important to the organisation’s vision for the future.

Bord na Mona Environmental UK Ltd acts as holding company for four operations. These include businesses focused on waste water, mechanical and electrical maintenance, and glass fibre fabrication. They also include Bord na Mona Environmental Products UK, which supplies process solutions for air pollution control problems and is centrally located in the West Midlands at Brierley Hill.

Director Bob Maloney, who has operating responsibility for Environmental Products UK and board responsibility for Environmental UK, explained how the division finds itself at the forefront of corporate thinking. “There has been significant endorsement recently of a change in the group’s strategic direction, and that is having a very favourable impact on the Environmental business. Our ‘New Purpose and Direction’ strategy was approved by the Irish government in October 2005 and is now being implemented.

Vote of confidence

“In the past, Bord na Mona (as its Gaelic name indicates) was very reliant on peat. But that’s a mature business, and so the decision is to move away from it and to diversify into waste management, power generation and environmental solutions. The focus on that third element is, of course, especially important to us, and it shows the group’s confidence in this division.”

It’s a confidence that’s already proving well founded. At Attleborough, in Norfolk, a project at the second of three Banham Poultry plants has recently been completed. The scheme uses pioneering techniques for the composting of waste (techniques which are also to be used at a waste management facility in County Kildare, for which the division’s Irish arm has just been given the green light). Meanwhile, on the Environmental Products front, a contract has just been secured with KemFine at Grangemouth to effect dramatic improvements in the site’s air pollution control.

R&D has been vital to the strategy of diversification, and Maloney spelt out what it has meant for air pollution control. “We started off 25 years ago using a peat-based product that we’d discovered good for removing odours, especially at sewage works. More recently, though, we sought to establish whether other materials – and waste materials in particular – were suitable for odour control. We discovered we could use seashells, which are environmentally attractive because they’re a waste product of the food industry. Water is passed over the shells, and bugs (introduced to live on their surface) break down the odours, which they use as a food source. That seashell-based technology has become the cornerstone of the business and we’ve sold some 250 installations around the UK.”

This success, he continued, is leading to interest in new applications. “The technology is attractive to the food industry, because it’s environmentally friendly. There’s also an interesting development in the area of solvent removal, where we’re able to use a different sort of shell. Oyster shells give these installations longer life and improved performance, and they’re what will be used for the Grangemouth contract. When you consider the environmental costs of such traditional alternatives as activated carbon and incineration, you can see the potential of our patented technology for displacing the competition.”

Supply chain ironies

Sourcing the material for greener processes is, however, producing its own problems. Shells, which were once unwanted waste, have now acquired a value and so come at a cost. Some of them, moreover, have to be imported from the USA. While cockle and mussel shells can be readily obtained from the UK and Europe, diners on this side of the Atlantic insist on eating their oysters straight from the shell. It’s only in the States that people are happy to consume them ready-evicted; so it’s only there that processing produces empty shells in bulk.

Of course, the business needs bipeds as well as bivalves, and the company knows how to value their skills. “We have quite a stable workforce,” said Maloney, “and we encourage them to put forward their own wishes in terms of training. We very strongly support the idea of people’s continuous development.”

But in the waste water business there’s an issue with the potential to waste hard-earned skills. OFWAT, the government regulator, imposes the AMP period – a five-year cycle to which all water suppliers are bound. During one such period a company is required to develop its plan for the next and then negotiate with the regulator to secure the necessary agreement.

This rolling programme of five-year plans has effects that are felt beyond the water companies themselves. “All suppliers to the industry suffer because of the cycles’ peaks and troughs,” Maloney explained, “and that can make it difficult in terms of people management. Employees get moved around in the water industry, and many disappear in the troughs. That’s a loss of training investment. Bord na Mona is less affected than many, because it has the flexibility to move people within its own businesses within the UK or further afield. But from the broader UK point of view, it doesn’t seem the best way to run a water business.”

Certainly Bord na Mona Environmental is looking for a more joined-up future in its own enterprise, and that’s where the new strategy is promising to take it. Customers are increasingly serious about their own environmental impact, and they are also scrutinising the methods used to achieve their ends. “More and more companies now specify that they wish to employ the technique that’s best from the environmental point of view,” Maloney observed. “As a result, our technology is increasingly attractive resulting in a strong order book and excellent prospects for the future.”