Signing the contracts, Dave Raybould (Aker Solutions), Peter Sharman (RWE), Dave Ley (Aker Solutions), Lennart Ohlsson (Metso), Martin Lenkens (RWE) and Kari Remes (Metso)

Last week RWE signed what a "milestone" contract with Finnish Metso and Norwegian Aker Solutions who have been selected to be the main contractors for moving on the project for a state-of-the-art biomass plant in the UK, which we covered back in September last year. Metso is going to provide the facility's main biomass boiler, while Aker Solutions will provide construction project management, support services and procurement of some of the plant equipment.

The power plant, to be built at Markinch in Fife (Scotland), is a GBP 200 million project and will be a biomass combined heat and power plant. RWE npower renewables, RWE's renewable energy arm, is working with paper producer Tullis Russell for supplying the manufacturer with steam and electricity from the biomass plant. This will be the biggest biomass facility of its kind in Scotland, with 50 MW of installed capacity, and will replace the existing coal-fired power plant used at Tullis Russell.

This is so far the largest investment in a biomass project for RWE, but there are plans for another biomass power plant with 65 MW of capacity in Lincolnshire. The company has plans for further biomass facility development across Europe, about 390 MW of biomass capacity, by 2013.

All three companies have expressed satisfaction with the signing of this contract. The Markinch biomass facility is now on its way towards a planned completion sometime in 2012.

[source: RWE]