Peel Ports is leasing nine acres of its Port Wirral site to the Hydrotec Group to build an oil re-refinery. This process transforms used oil which would otherwise be treated as a waste product into a new product which can be re-used as base oil.
The regenerated base oil is used as a building block to create lubricants which are used particularly in the automotive and industrial sectors.
The nine acre Eastham site at Queen Elizabeth II Docks at the mouth of the Manchester Ship Canal forms the first phase of a £40 million development.
Hydrodec chose the site for its UK re-refinery to take advantage of the transport connections by road, rail and water along the River Mersey and Manchester Ship Canal.
It currently operates two other used oil re-refineries, in Canton, Ohio and in New South Wales, Australia.
Chief executive Ian Smale said: “We considered various potential sites in the UK for the new re-refinery and selected the Eastham site for a number of reasons. The site is located in an established petrochemicals region and is allocated for employment use, provides good transport links by river and by road, while the availability of adjacent storage facilities means the size of the new plant can be kept to a minimum.”
Construction is expected to commence in 2016 and will take approximately 18 months to complete.
The news comes just four months after Culina signed a deal to become the anchor tenant of Peel Ports’ new £125m multi-modal logistics hub on the Manchester Ship Canal called Port Salford. Peel Ports is also investing £300m to create a deep water container terminal, known as Liverpool2.
