THE growing prominence of the waste management industry has been highlighted by the stockmarket listing of Perth company Organic Resource Technologies.
THE growing prominence of the waste management industry has been highlighted by the stockmarket listing of Perth company Organic Resource Technologies.
ORT is proceeding with a back door listing on the Australian Stock Exchange through Syntech Group (formerly Cape Tel). It also plan to raise $2.5 million to help fund the construction of its first waste treatment plant.
ORT is at the forefront of the shift towards secondary treatment of municipal solid waste, which traditionally has been dumped in landfills.
Its first plant is expected to be built at the Brockway Road transfer station in Subiaco, under an agreement with the Western Metropolitan Regional Council.
The $4 million, 20,000 tonnes per annum prototype plant could lead to the construction of a fully commercial plant with processing capacity of
p to 60,000 tonnes per annum.
The privately owned Atlas Group, which treats waste for City of Stirling, offers a guide to the potential income. Atlas currently treats about 70,000 tonnes of waste per annum and is paid $65 per tonne, earning about $4.5 million.
ORT director Thomas Rudas said the company had a flexible approach to ownership of future plants but always wanted hands-on involvement with their operation.
“We see ourselves as al-ways being involved in the operation or management of the plant,” Mr Rudas said.
“That protects the councils’ investment in the plant and it protects our reputation.”
Western Metro is one of five regional councils across Perth, all of which are planning to establish secondary waste treatment plants. Southern Metropolitan Regional Council is the most advanced, recently opening a $35 million composting plant at Canning Vale with a capacity of 130,000 tonnes per annum.
ORT’s technology provides a smaller alternative, in terms of both the throughput and the footprint of the plant.
It also has virtually no environmental impact, since the treatment occurs inside a closed compact vessel.
All of these factors mean that waste treatment plants using ORT technology can be built in proximity to residential areas, substantially reducing transport costs for the local municipality.
The unique feature of ORT’s technology is the integration of aerobic and anaerobic biological systems into a single stage, continuous process.
Alternative treatment methods use two discrete processes — aerobic composting and anaerobic digestion — or combine them into a two-stage process.
For the first time, the end product of both systems, namely compost and biogas, is produced simultaneously in a single vessel, with full con-servation of bio-energy and significantly reduced conversion time and cost, ORT said.
The ‘backdoor listing’ involves Syntech issuing 52 million shares and 30 million options to the current owners of ORT.
The owners of ORT will end up owning a majority of Syntech, which will change its name to Organic Resource Technologies.
The directors of the company will be Richard Rudas, whose engineering business Forwes helped Atlas Group develop its waste treatment system, Thomas Rudas, who invented the ORT technology, and investor Mark Caruso.
As part of the $2.5 million capital raising, the company can issue up to $1 million of convertible notes to entities associated with Mr Caruso.
