Doing our business with others

If you’re involved in the treatment of sewage sludge then we’d like to see if we can work with you.

Bioresources is the term used to capture the activities and processes associated with the collection, transport, treatment and end product recycling for sewage sludge. Sewage sludge is a by-product of the treatment of waste water.

At Anglian Water we produce approximately 150,000 tonnes dry solids per annum of sewage sludge across our operating area at over 1,100 water recycling centres (WRC). The sludge requires treatment before it can be safely and sustainably be recycled back into the environment.

Anglian Water has ten dedicated sludge treatment centres (STC), co-located on our some of our largest WRC’s. The STC’s receive sludge from the smaller satellite WRC’s transported by road tanker, treatment is by a process known as advanced anaerobic digestion, this conditions and treats the sludge to produce a high quality biosolids product which is rich in nutrients and suitable for use in agriculture as a soil conditioner. Our biosolids products are marketed under the brand of Nutri-bio and is assured under the Biosolids Assurance Scheme (BAS). The digestion process also produces biogas, the gas has a calorific value approximately two thirds of that of natural gas and we use as a fuel for a fleet of combines heat and power (CHP) engines, the engines generate renewable electricity off-setting power use for our sites with surplus exported to the national grid, heat from the engines is recovered and used to heat the anaerobic digestion process. Optimising our processes to produce biogas for beneficial use helps us reduce our operational carbon emissions and supports our ambitions to achieve net zero by 2030.

As part of our PR24 Business Plan we have updated our 25 year long term Bioresources Strategy, this is available to download via the link below.

In addition to updating our own strategy we are please to have been key contributors along with our fellow WaSC’s in the development of a national long term bioresources strategy commissioned through WaterUK. This is an important piece of work for the industry and sets the direction and tone for our own strategy update. The final report and be viewed and downloaded from the WaterUK website here.

Sewage sludge treatment

We might be able to treat sludge produced elsewhere in one of our Sludge Treatment Centres (STCs) or you may be interested in treating our sludge.

To see if this could work for your business, view our operational data in the links below. Here you’ll find out more about our Sludge Treatment Centres and the sludge produced at our Water Recycling Centres:

Contact us

We hope this information helps you identify potential business opportunities. If you’re keen to work with us in the sludge treatment market, email the Bioresources Bid Assessment team.

Our Bioresources Bid Assessment Framework

To support the development of bidding activity within the bioresources market, Ofwat set out guidance in February 2022 for sewerage companies to create Bioresources Bid Assessment Frameworks (BBAF) setting out the structured process for the assessment of solutions or schemes proposed by third parties.

Our Bid Assessment Framework aims to give confidence to prospective bidders that the bids will be assessed fairly using the same evaluation criteria as in-house solutions through a transparent bidding process. Our BBAF outlines the pre-qualification requirements, specifications requirements, and evaluation criteria we proposed to use to through this standardised process.

Unlocking Bioresources Markets

We have recently completed an exciting project funded through the Ofwat Innovation Fund Catalyst Competition exploring opportunities for Bioresources Markets. In the project we were joined by Northumbrian Water, Yorkshire Water, Thames Water and Southern Water working with technology partners Business Modelling Applications (BMA). The final report can be downloaded and output dashboards are hosted on the BMA website and can be accessed here.

Bioresources Bid Assessment Framework