Bord na Mona

Source: Energy Digital

Date :17/03/2008 11:12:26

A year after Exec first spoke to Bob Maloney, Director of Bord na Mona Environmental UK Ltd., we catch up again to talk about oyster shells, solid waste and solvent emissions

Written by Rebecca Waters and Produced by Kiron Chavda

MD Bob Maloney is by no means the conventional businessman; his approach is direct but laid-back, forceful without lacking good humour, it perhaps partly explains why Bord na Móna Environmental’s UK subsidiary is making a name for itself.

Bord na Móna Enviromental has positioned itself as a market leader, building up a successful contract portfolio which includes the likes of Southern Water and Biffa, two companies at their top of their respective fields.

A division of the state-owned Bord na Móna Plc, one of the world’s largest peat producers, Bord na Móna Environmental is an environmental management company, specialising in environmental monitoring services, consultancy, wastewater treatment and air pollution abatement systems. Such strong a presence could be attributed to the company’s size.

Across the two facilities in the UK, there are 28 people directly employed by the company, a figure kept down by the subcontracting of its installation work. “It enables us to be more flexible in terms of geography,” explains Maloney. “We can use local labour rather than moving labour around.”

This also means that the company can accommodate peaks and troughs more easily. This approach has seen visible benefits particularly in the water industry, largely because of the way it’s financed, “at least 40 percent of the workload is now in the industrial sector rather than in the water sector.”

Development, enhancement

The company’s primary investment is into product development and enhancement, both of its people and of new and existing technologies and applications. The latter is actively put into practice over five pilot sites across the UK. One of the main contracts that had just been secured last year which is now fully operational is with chemical manufacturing company Kemfine UK Ltd at its Grangemouth site. It employs Bord na Móna Environmental’s then-new oyster shell (Mónashell) technology for solvent emission abatement.

“We discovered we could use seashells, which are environmentally attractive because they’re a waste product of the food industry. Ironically, the technology is itself attractive to the food industry for odour control, because it’s environmentally friendly. There’s also further interesting developments in the area of solvent removal, where we’re able to use a different sort of shell to extend the application envelope.”

The success of this technology has led to interest in new applications. The Corus contract specifically will be the “next generation” in oyster shell-applications. Maloney explains that the company is about to get a significant contract with Corus Steel of Scunthorpe for treating solvent emissions from that site. “We’ve done pilot trials for twelve months on that site and that’s enabled us to optimise the full scale plant now. So we’ve actually brought efficiency in terms of cost and power consumption to that site through our pilot plant activities.”

The ability to build these technological competencies is credited to two wings: its formal knowledge base, through patents and licenses, and informal knowledge base, through staff training and application experience.

Bord na Móna Environmental is active in its personal development and people development essential to any company on a progressive basis, devising a twelve month training programme for its employees. “We actively encourage anyone to come forward with any suggestions they’ve got on where they would like to enhance their skills,” says Maloney, himself currently applying to mentor for the Institute of Chemical Engineers.

As well as the IChemE, the company is also directly involved with Advantage West Midlands, a government agency based in the West Midlands, and Dudley College which provides training provision in marketing activities.

Landfill

With the drive in the UK to reduce the amount of landfill, another of the “principal activities” at the moment involves municipal solid waste: bin bags. The company is directly involved in looking at odour control for the composting activities, having already put in twelve plants in Italy and quoting for a “considerable number” in the UK. It has already completed work in the food composting industry with Norfolk-based Banham Poultry Ltd. This year, the company is involved with Biffa in Leicester where it will provide maintenance and service for odour control on waste removed by Biffa under a 25 year contract with Leicester City Council.

This ‘greener message’ is something that Maloney is very keen to convey to the local community. “If you look at the way we treat odours and solvent emissions compared with other technologies, ours is the most sustainable and green way of doing it. I feel passionately about that; people need to recognise that as an important feature of our plant and so anything we can do in the community to promote that is beneficial both ways.”

Service and maintenance

As a competitor in an industry where- as the name suggests - sustainability is everything, you need to be sure that you’re confident in your own activities. “There’s no point in a person buying a piece of capital equipment if it’s not maintained in reasonably good operational state,” says Maloney.

This is one of the key parts of Bord na Móna Environmental’s future business: the service and maintenance aspects of the work.

With every new piece of capital equipment, the company offers what is best described as a service and maintenance package. This means that clients can be assured that their unit will continue to function correctly for years to come, whilst ensuring that they will meet all the emissions standards for the foreseeable future. “It’s a kind of an extended life that we’ll guarantee on the plant as a result of the service,” Maloney explains.

Significant growth

Bord na Móna takes a forward-looking approach, focussed on efficiency and sustainability, which forms the bedrock of its five year plan (also including the strategic decisions of its semi-state parent company). “In the environmental sector, that is very much focussed on the whole area of waste and pollution control and how we manage those activities,” Maloney says.

For 2008 and beyond, he identifies these as Bord na Móna Environmental’s two “growth sectors” - the municipal solid waste sector because of the drive to reduce the amount of landfill and industrial solvent emissions because of green technology. “We believe that we will replace older, energy-consuming technologies over the coming years with our more efficient, environmentally-friendly technology. If you look at the way we treat odours and solvent emissions compared with other technologies, ours is the most sustainable and green way of doing it and I feel passionate about that.”

Click here to view the corporate brochure on Bona na Mona