By ELLEN READ
Te Awamutu to the Channel Islands is a long and unusual journey, but next week a product of Auckland company Waste Technology will make the trek, earning $5 million for its creators.
Waste Technology, established in 1984 by Winston McDonald and Russell McKeen, won the contract in a
highly competitive international tender after demonstrating its waste-to-energy product was a world beater in price and design.
And to prove it was not just luck, the company has several other deals in the pipeline.
Over the next two years, Waste Technology has projects planned in Canada, China, Hong Kong and the Middle East with a combined value of more than $50 million.
After that, projects in the UK, Turkey, Europe and China between 2003 and 2006 are in advanced planning stages.
These plants are expected to be worth more than $100 million.
Mr McDonald and Mr McKeen were already in the waste collection business when they began building waste disposal units.
Their major product - the Whirlstream waste-to-energy system - was developed to meet the need in remote New Zealand for a modern clinical and quarantine waste disposal system.
They soon realised New Zealand's cheap production costs and high quality production standards made them internationally competitive.
The firm's key innovation was a high temperature incineration process, recognised as representing leading technology in most advanced countries.
The system, used in several hospitals and airports in New Zealand, enables the safe and economic disposal of medical, quarantine, cytotoxic, radioactive, pharmaceutical, industrial and agricultural wastes.
The waste is fed into the unit and burned and the resulting energy is turned into steam or hot water which can be used for heating, laundry and sterilisation.
Waste Technology employs 10 staff directly.
Most of the manufacturing is contracted out as this is cheaper than the company building its own facilities and employing its own specialised staff.
The final steel work is done in the workshop of Stewart and Cavalier engineering supplies and services in Te Awamutu.
The Whirlstream system configuration and the emission results achieved were judged in 1997 by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as representing the Maximum Achievable Control Technology for medical waste incinerators.
The emissions also exceed the 1994 European Union Directive requirements for Hazardous Waste Incinerators, and all present legislative requirements.
The unit going to Channel Islands, in the English Channel between England and France, can continuously generate around one tonne an hour of high pressure steam.
The unit was disassembled for shipping.
Engineer Roger Meyer will oversee the installation - expected to take three weeks - at the States of Guernsey Board of Health.
By ELLEN READ
Te Awamutu to the Channel Islands is a long and unusual journey, but next week a product of Auckland company Waste Technology will make the trek, earning $5 million for its creators.
Waste Technology, established in 1984 by Winston McDonald and Russell McKeen, won the contract in a
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