GB Railfreight has joined with waste management company Biffa to transform land in East London into a transport hub.

The Renwick road site links key waste sites and will be transporting 250,000 tonnes of waste from London using the rail network.

Biffa has a strategic aim to transport 50% of all its waste using rail by 2025.

In 2018 a partnership was launched with GBRf and since then over 1 million tonnes of waste has been transported by train, which ha saved over 1m tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions from reaching the atmosphere.

Renwick road has been in use by the railway since 1864 and has been unused since 1991. Biffa has spent £4.2m on the site and removed 14,000 tonnes of fly-tipped waste and debris.

Five trains a week will transport waste from North and East London to sites at Roxby, Scunthorpe, Leeds and Manchester.

Mick Davis, Chief Operating Officer for Resources and Energy Division at Biffa said: “The opening of our new rail hub marks the next step in our strategic partnership with GBRf to increase our capacity for transportation by rail. It will help us reduce dependence on vehicles on the road and reduce the emissions we produce. The site was totally derelict when we took it on and amongst the rubbish and debris we cleared, we actually found some interesting items, including one and a half tonnes of World War Two bullets.”

John Smith, Managing Director at GBRf commented: “We are delighted to be working with Biffa on this project and our collaboration will see us move thousands of tonnes of waste in a sustainable way. This is the way forward if we are to reach the net zero carbon emission target by 2050 and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Biffa in the months and years to come to ensure more waste can be removed by rail.”

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