THE final piece of Fenland’s first anaerobic digestion plant is now in place – and it will be fully operational within weeks.

Standing about 17 metres tall, the biogas dome at Local Generation’s plant in Westry, March, which will gather the biogas created by the digestion process, is now ready for action.

The biogas will be processed through a series of combined heat and power units producing electricity and heat – some of the electricity will be used by the Fenmarc factory in Westry and the rest sold to the National Grid.

Local Generation, a sister company of Fenmarc, has also been granted planning permission to increase the capacity of plant from 30,000 tonnes to 70,000 tonnes.

Nick Waterman, managing director of Local Generation, said: “This is an exciting time for the Local Generation business. We will be commissioning the plant shortly and will be fully operational early in 2012. We’ll then start to plan the move towards 70,000 tonnes; this will divert even more food waste from landfill and further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

He added: “I would like to recognise the excellent support and specifically the Capital Grant received from the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in helping us to progress this exciting project.”