• Projected revenues amount to 694 million euro.
• It will provide services for more than 300,000 people in 20 municipalities.

FCC has obtained a 24-year contract to design, fund, build and operate an environmental complex to manage waste for a group of municipalities in eastern Madrid province. Projected revenues amount to 694 million euro.

The environmental complex, located in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), beside the Daganzo highway and very close to the R-2 toll road, will be able to treat 220,000 tonnes of organic waste and 13,000 tonnes of packaging waste per year.

Initially, the complex will manage waste from more than 300,000 residents in 20 municipalities in the area.

FCC will invest 100 million euro in building plants for sorting household packaging, composting and plasma treatment, as well as a controlled landfill.

The project includes building a transfer station with the capacity to transfer 150,000 tonnes of organic waste and 6,000 tonnes of packaging waster per year, and a new unloading pit in the landfill in Alcalá de Henares.

Organic waste will be directed to a sorting plant consisting of mechanical sorting and biological treatment facilities. Packaging waste will be sent to the container sorting plant, where reusable materials will be separated automatically and manually using electromechanical equipment with a unit capacity of 7 tonnes/hour.

Rejects from the various installations will be used to produce energy in a plasma plant with capacity for 15,000 tonnes/year and the rest will go to the controlled landfill. This process will generate a synthesis gas, which will be sold for methanol production and power generation.

In addition to the three plants, the environmental complex will have: a plant for disposing of dead pets, another to handle bulky items, and a third for plant matter.

The leachates and dirty water from the various installations will be transferred to a treatment plant (120 m3/day) designed to produce discharges within the quality levels set by the River Authority.

The facility will also use chemical and biological treatments to process gaseous emissions. Buildings where smells may be produced will be sealed and at negative pressure.

This contract further strengthens FCC's leading position in Spain in environmental services. At the end of 2007, the environmental services backlog amounted to 23.408 billion euro.

Present in over 5,000 municipalities

FCC first began working in urban sanitation in 1915 with a waste collection contract in Barcelona; today it is a leader in the sector. Other urban sanitation contracts in Spain followed and, at the end of 1980, it began to expand abroad. FCC operates in over 5,000 municipalities in Europe, Africa and Latin America.

In Spain alone, it provides services to more than 26 million people, and operates in many provincial capitals such as Albacete, Alicante, Ávila, Barcelona, Bilbao, Castellón, Ceuta, Cuenca, Gerona, Jaén, Las Palmas, Madrid, Málaga, Melilla, Oviedo, Pamplona, Salamanca, San Sebastián, Segovia, Tarragona, Valencia, Valladolid and Vitoria.

It manages 8.8 million tonnes of household, commercial and industrial waste each year and operates waste reception, recycling and disposal plants, including a network of transfer stations, recycling plants and landfills nationwide.

In Spain, FCC has a total of 41 landfills, 37 transfer stations, 2 waste-to-power plants, 27 composting plants, 17 packaging sorting plants (7 of which are free-standing and 10 are combined with other waste treatment plants), 68 citizen recycling centres and other industrial waste recycling and treatment facilities.