US Giant buys town energy business

US industrial giant GE has announced it is buying up Mansfield-based energy business Monsal in a deal being reported as worth around £15m.

Monsal, which is based at the Ransom Wood Business Park, has pioneered the use of advanced technology which turns bulk solid waste into renewable energy and by-products it can sell on.

It uses anaerobic digestion, a biological process in which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen.

One of the end products is biogas, which can be combusted to generate electricity and heat—a feature that GE Power & Water’s Distributed Power business can achieve with Jenbacher gas engines.

Heiner Markhoff, president and CEO—water and process technologies for GE Power & Water said: “The acquisition of Monsal, with its advanced anaerobic digestion technology, will enable us to provide our customers with more energy-efficient options for water treatment solutions.

“Now our wastewater treatment solutions can be combined with new, advanced anaerobic digestion technologies to convert biosolids to renewable sources of energy for our customers.”

Aidan Cumiskey, managing director, Monsal, added: “GE’s global expertise and reach in the municipal and industrial water treatment industry is world class and is very complementary to Monsal’s advanced digestion capabilities and our overall strategy for international expansion.

“Joining the GE family will allow Monsal to bring our technologies to a significantly broader audience as well as give us R&D capabilities at a much larger scale than we have now.

“We expect to expand our product and technology range with the GE resource, so that we become the ‘go-to’ company globally for anaerobic digestion.”

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