FCC Environmental Services and the city of Houston Solid Waste Management Department celebrated a groundbreaking act on the new Material Recovery Facility (MRF). The facility will be FCC´s second MRF in Texas and its most advanced facility. The contract to design, finance, build and operate the plant to sort, recover and market was awarded to FCC in January 2018 for more than 250 million dollars, for 15 years extendable up to 20 years.

The act was attended by representatives of the City of Houston, with the presence of Major Sylvester Turner, and Vice Mayor Pro-Tem and Council member District B, Jerry Davis. Representing FCC Environmental Services were Iñigo Sanz, CEO of FCC Environmental Services; Tony Emilio, Director of Municipal Services and Andrea Rodriguez, Technical director.

The plant will have the latest materials separation technologies opening its doors in March 2019.The Houston facilities will occupy an area of six hectares with a covered area of about 11,000 square meters and it has a 145,000 ton per year processing capacity, which is more than double of the current needs of the City and is expected to create 100 permanent fulltime jobs.

The collection fleet, owned by the city of Houston, will take the waste from the selective collection container to the FCC facilities, where all recyclables in the city will be processed and sold exclusively.

With the award of Houston, FCC continues to take firm steps in the consolidation of its project to launch its environmental services activity in North America and capitalize on this market it’s more than 115 years’ experience in such sector worldwide.

USA, market for Environmental Services

FCC is present in the United States through FCC Environmental Services, the Group’s environmental services subsidiary in that country, which covers the businesses and services of the collection of rubbish, recycling and treatment of solid urban wastes, handling of industrial wastes, treatment of wastes from petroleum and gas production and exploration, soil decontamination and other environmental services.

For FCC Environment the USA is a growing market and is consolidating as one of the main markets on which this company is focusing and in which it has occupied an outstanding place in a short time. The FCC Group’s environmental services area has won important contracts in recent years. The first contracts achieved in Texas were the transport of bio-solid wastes in the city of Houston, the construction and management of the new Materials Recycling Plant (MRF) in the McCommas Bluff Landfill facilities at the south of Dallas and the treatment and commercialising of all the recyclable materials for the city of University Park. In 2017, the company won three new contracts in Texas, in the cities of Mesquite, Garland and Rowlett. FCC also won two contracts for the collection of solid urban municipal wastes in Polk County and Orange County, both in the state of Florida. In the United Kingdom, FCC Environment was recently awarded the contract of rubbish collection and street cleaning at Northamptonshire, with a backlog of 20 million euro, and the works of the Recovery and Energy-from-Waste facility at Millerhill, near Edinburgh, are nearly to completion, with a throughput over 150,000 tonnes per annum.

About FCC

FCC Group is a leading global provider of environmental services, water management and infrastructure works. With more than 115 years of experience, FCC today has a presence in over 35 countries. The company’s more than 54,000 employees worldwide interact with citizens on a daily basis and focus on constantly increasing sustainability. Together, we will create socially-integrated solutions one community at a time.

The environmental services division of the company, has been active for over 100 years and has built its success on a commitment to innovation and to helping cities become smarter, more sustainable and more socially conscious. It currently serves over 60 million people in more than 5,000 municipalities across 13 countries. It has a network of more than 200 recycling and recovery facilities that process in excess of 24 million tonnes every year as a resource, including 10 existing waste to energy projects with a capacity over 2.6 million tons and 300 MW power output.