THE final phase of construction is underway at North Yorkshire’s new £1.4 billion waste incinerator.

More than 1.3 million hours have been worked at the Allerton Waste Recovery Park, off the A1, near Knaresborough, where work is now in its final phase ahead of a plans for the site to fully operational in a years time.

Construction began in January 2015 with the excavation of more than 55,000 tonnes of earth to create the waste bunkers. During 2015 most of the work was focused on construction of the 22m deep waste bunkers and laying the foundations for the rest of the plant.

Mark James, construction Manager at Allerton Waste Recovery Park, said: “2016 was a very busy year which saw the facility really taking shape.

“A key landmark was the installation of the stack on the energy from waste plant during the summer.

“With the energy from waste part of the facility most of the equipment is put into place and the building is then completed around. We are now in the final stages of that building work.

“At the other side of the facility we’ve completed mechanical treatment building and we are now busy getting that equipment installed. This is progressing really well.

“When it is complete it will feature a range of intelligent sorting equipment including magnets and infrared detectors to separate out plastics and metals for recycling.”

When operational, Allerton Waste Recovery Park will use three differing technologies to handle North Yorkshire’s and the city of York’s rubbish.

Incoming waste will first go through a mechanical treatment process which will extract materials such as plastics and metals which can be recycled; organic waste will also be separated and sent to an anaerobic digester which will transform the waste into renewable energy.

The remaining rubbish will be sent to the energy from waste plant which will use it as a fuel to create energy – the facility will export 24MW of energy to the National Grid every hour – enough to power the equivalent of 40,000 homes.

Last year saw building, which will house the mechanical treatment part of the facility, constructed; the anaerobic digestion unit was installed and the energy from waste plant was constructed.