Listed Perth company ORT Limited has signed a funding agreement with Perpetual Investment Management that it hopes will end a year-long halt to work at its flagship waste treatment project.
ORT started construction in July last year of a $20 million municipal waste processing facility using its innovative DICOM system.
Construction activity in Shenton Park was halted a few months later when the company was unable to raise additional equity capital.
Under the new deal, Perpetual has agreed, subject to due diligence, to fund the construction of the first $8 million stage of ORT’s waste treatment plant.
ORT said the Perpetual deal provided “greater certainty” as to the full development of its Shenton Park project.
Perpetual’s head of infrastructure Brett Lazarides said his firm was “highly encouraged” with the results of its investigations to date into ORT’s technology and operating model.
The proposed plant is underpinned by an agreement with the Western Metropolitan Regional Council, which covers the municipalities of Mosman Park, Cottesloe, Claremont, Peppermint Grove and Subiaco.
The plant would be built at the council’s existing waste transfer station and, at full capacity, would be able to process 55,000 tonnes of waste annually.
ORT’s DICOM process has been developed in Perth over the past six years and holds the potential to shake up the municipal waste treatment sector.
A unique feature of the DICOM process is that the organic waste stays in one vessel while it is converted to energy and compost.
Alternative waste treatment plants, such as the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council’s $70 million facility in Canning Vale, use two processes and require a much larger land mass.
Mindarie Regional Council, which covers the City of Perth and most of Perth’s northern suburbs, will be the next regional council to launch a big waste treatment project.
It will shortly be calling tenders for a waste treatment facility initially capable of processing 100,000t/year.
The six short-listed bidders for the Mindarie project include GRD subsidiary Global Renewables, which recently completed a waste treatment plant in western Sydney that was designed to process 175,000t of municipal waste a year.
Global Renewables also was recently named preferred bidder for waste treatment projects in Melbourne and in Lancashire in the UK.
