McCulla builds £3m green energy unit

Lisburn. Co Antrim, N Ireland, UK:  McCulla Ireland is spending over £3m on a 500 kilowatt anaerobic digestion plant at its Co Antrim base.

The anaerobic process produces renewable energy via a combined heat and power plant for the McCulla complex with surplus energy being sold via the grid. The by-product, organic digestate, will return to farm land as a soil conditioner.

McCulla’s managing director, Ashley McCulla, said: “While many companies are consolidating in these tough times, we are confident that making this investment will be very beneficial not only to ourselves but to the wider community.”

Planning consultant Thomas Bell of Clyde Shanks says: “The site’s industrial context, its central location for drawing feedstock, and its location adjacent to a strategic arterial route, the M1, lends itself very well to anaerobic digestion from a planning policy perspective, and it is hoped that planning permission will be secured by April 2013.”