Encyclis takes full ownership of energy recovery fleet with Rookery South acquisition

Acquisition of Veolia’s 20% stake completes Encyclis’ full ownership of all four Energy-from-Waste facilities in its core fleet in the UK Midlands

Encyclis has announced the acquisition of Veolia UK’s 20% ownership stake in Rookery South Energy Recovery Facility (ERF), in Bedfordshire.

The acquisition means Encyclis has full ownership of all four Energy-from-Waste facilities in its core fleet in central England. In 2025, Encyclis took full ownership of Newhurst ERF, in Leicestershire, and Protos ERF, in Cheshire, after acquiring the shares previously held by Biffa. Walsall ERF, under construction in the West Midlands, is also wholly owned.

Full ownership allows Encyclis to operate Rookery South, Newhurst, Protos and Walsall as a single integrated fleet, sharing engineering and operational expertise across sites and recovering metals and secondary aggregates through the company’s Wellingborough bottom ash processing plant. For waste suppliers, the integrated fleet provides a more flexible and resilient service, including the ability to redirect waste between facilities during planned maintenance, and establishing a single point of contact across the region.

Rookery South ERF is one of the largest and most modern Energy-from-Waste facilities in the UK, with capacity to process up to 657,000 tonnes of residual, non-recyclable waste per year, generating 60MW of reliable baseload electricity and recovering secondary aggregates and metals in support of the circular economy transition.  The site is also home to one of the UK’s first carbon capture pilot plants in the waste sector and secured planning permission in December 2025 for a full-scale carbon capture facility.

The facility, which occupies a former clay extraction pit near Bedford, was developed as a joint venture between Encyclis and Veolia UK. It began commercial operations in January 2022, with Encyclis as majority owner and operator, and Veolia as the facility’s main supplier of waste, a role which it will retain following the acquisition.

With Protos ERF now in the final stages of commissioning, Walsall ERF under construction in the West Midlands and a development project in the pipeline, Encyclis is building out a core operational portfolio that will process up to 2.3 million tonnes of residual waste per year.

Encyclis is also delivering a groundbreaking carbon capture deployment in the North West, which, upon completion in 2029, will make Protos ERF the UK’s first decarbonised Energy-from-Waste facility. The project will prevent the release of around 370,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year, which will instead be transferred via pipeline for permanent storage in Liverpool Bay as part of the Government-supported HyNet North West industrial decarbonisation cluster.

Mark Burrows-Smith, CEO of Encyclis, said:

“By taking full ownership of Rookery South ERF, we are consolidating our position as a leading pure-play Energy-from-Waste business in the UK Midlands. With Rookery South, Newhurst, Protos and Walsall all wholly owned by Encyclis, we have an integrated fleet, which gives us significant advantages in operational optimisation and allows us to offer waste suppliers a more flexible and resilient service – in a region that generates around 10 million tonnes of non-recyclable waste every year. We thank Veolia for its partnership in developing and operating Rookery South and look forward to continuing to work together, with Veolia remaining the facility’s principal waste supplier. Protos ERF has achieved first fire on waste, Walsall ERF is due to begin operations next year and construction of our carbon capture plant at Protos is well underway.”