The largest project of these four is the project Szarvas in Hungary with an electric power output of 4 MW. The customer is Aufwind Neue Energien GmbH, from Regensburg in Bavaria, part of the group BayWa r.e. GmbH, with more than 13 years of experience in project development. Part of the delivered input material, such as poultry manure, slaughterhouse wastes and pig slurry, comes from the customer´s partner Gallicoop Zrt, Hungary´s second largest turkey slaughterhouse. Further substrates include renewable raw material and cow manure. The biogas plant Szarvas, approx. 150 km away from Budapest, is a UTS Helios® plant and will be built with 7 fermenters providing a total reactor volume of 17,000 m³. The construction works will already start by the end of July 2010.
The same is true for UTS´ first Polish biogas project – the construction works are equally going to start this summer. The project Buczek is a 1.7 MW biogas plant in the Northern part of Poland. It is the result of six years of work from the project development company Aufwind Schmack Nowa Energia Sp. z.o.o, a subsidiary of the German Aufwind Neue Energien GmbH. With its 3 fermenters – also a UTS Helios® series plant – the biogas plant Buczek will digest 115,000 tons of wastes per year once it is completed. Especially in Poland, UTS expects very good market opportunities for their technology and their flexible approach, as shown by the successful cooperation with the experienced project developer Aufwind Schmack
Nowa Energia Sp. z.o.o. Mr Zbigniew Szymandera, General Manager of Aufwind Schmack Nowa Energia Sp. z.o.o, commented as follows on the cooperation with UTS: “Competent biogas plant builders with relevant references, reliable technology with flexible approaches are extremely important for a waste project like Buczek – and UTS fulfills all those requirements.”
Another two Helios® biogas plants with an electric capacity of 1 MW each were ordered by subsidiaries of the Croatian agricultural group Žito d.o.o, being one of Croatia´s largest companies in the agricultural sector with 1,100 employees and 20,000 ha under cultivation. At the future location of the biogas plants, one of the most modern dairy facilities in Europe was built in 2008. The slurry of 800 cows and locally grown biomass are to be converted into energy with the help of two biogas plants. UTS and the customer plan for the construction works to begin in early 2011.
“Besides our established markets in Germany and Italy, we have always focused on strategically important foreign growth markets in order to set up UTS as future-oriented as possible,” says Dr. Thomas Buer, Managing Director of the European parent company UTS Biogastechnik GmbH. “The reliable UTS technology has been improved continuously with regards to the fermentation of waste making it suitable for a wide range of applications. The flexibility and robustness of our products for various substrates and wastes played a significant role in obtaining these contracts.”