Ainscough plans energy plant at Swinton industrial Park
AINSCOUGH Strategic Land is looking to build a major energy from waste (EFW) plant at its newly-rebranded Junction Eco Park in Swinton.
Founder Martin Ainscough revealed the firm’s plans for the site at a relaunch of the sprawling 50-acre development last week.
“What we’d really like on site is a waste-to-energy plant,” he said. “We understand that they are sometimes contentions but it will allow us to deal with waste on site rather than sending it up the road again.
“We believe that this site has the right credentials and it is something that we will be talking to the planners about in the future.”
Ainscough Strategic Land is redeveloping the Junction Eco Park on behalf of owner Ainscough Properties – a separate venture owned by Martin alongside his brothers, Brendan and James.
Since the former Chloride Industrial Batteries site was bought in 2008, some £6m has been spent on its redevelopment and more than half of the space has been re-let to waste management and recycling firm Roydon, which consolidated three former sites (including its Rochdale headoffice) into a new 135,000 sq ft base in December last year.
Contract furniture maker Carlick from its base in Heywood and a new social enterprise centre in Chloride’s former HQ has been created, which is currently occupied by Recycling Lives and Skills2Build.
Mr Ainscough said that as tenants have moved in it became clear that the location would be suited towards an eco-park.
He said that Roydon currently processes around 50,000 tonnes of plastic a year and that Carlick, although not a recycler, provides wood offcuts which would provide available feedstock for an EFW plant.
“We use something like 3MW of power on this site so it would be nice for us to use some of that, and to get cheaper heat,” he said. “It makes sense to process it here rather than carting it up the road again.”
Mr Ainscough also told TheBusinessDesk.com that Ainscough Strategic Land was making good progress on several of its other major sites. In the Cheshire village of Cuddington, the firm gained planning approval for a £40m development containing 156 homes on the site of a former Ski yoghurt factory in April.
“We’re now in exclusivity with a major housebuilder with regards to that site and we’re hopeful of completing by September,” he said.
He added that a further site at Leyland in Lancashire, where the firm is planning 475 new homes on a 37-acre site.
“We’ll look to bring that to market in Q4 this year,” he added.
Mr Ainscough said that there are “great opportunities” for privately-owned companies in the property market who have their own funding in place.
“There’s still a massive shortage of cash available, and there’s still a lot of distressed deals we’re looking at,” he said.
“But we’re a niche player and we’ve no ambition to become developers.”
