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PDM Group's Widnes site is an integrated renewable energy and recycling plant; the first of its kind in the world.
As well as generating renewable electricity for the National Grid, the Widnes plant also supplies steam to an adjacent chemical factory. The supply of 'green' steam to the chemical factory has allowed that factory to close down their existing coal-fired boilers.
The Widnes site has benefited from a large investment program over the past 12 months to increase the production of renewable electricity.
The latest stage of the investment program has seen the installation of a larger capacity steam turbine and generator along with an uprated grid connection.
Read more about PDM Group's biomass-fuelled renewable energy operations 
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Energy Generation
Background
PDM Group was the first company in the world to develop a dedicated, commercial combustion process to use animal by-products as a renewable fuel source.
The technology to do this involved many year's research by PDM Group. A pilot plant was commissioned at PDM Group's Nuneaton site in 1997. Based on the information and expertise gathered from the pilot plant, in 2000 PDM Group opened the world's first commercial meat and bonemeal (MBM) combustion plant at Widnes, Cheshire.
In 1996 the UK government placed a total ban on the use of MBM in feeds for all farm animals. It also introduced the Over Thirty Months Scheme (OTMS) whereby cattle over the age of thirty months were removed from the food chain and totally destroyed.
PDM Group won a major Government contract for the processing and disposal of by-products arising from the OTMS scheme under the strictest and most controlled conditions. PDM's contracts cover the processing of the animal by-products and the combustion of the tallow and meat and bone meals produced; a unique integrated service on a single site.
Today, PDM Group's bubbling fluidised bed (BFB) combined heat and power (CHP) combustion technology provides the benchmark for the disposal of meat industry residues.