Company Miteco Kneževac inaugurated its recycling centre in Rakovica, a district of Serbia’s capital city. The facility consists of a transfer station for industrial and toxic waste, a recycling line and mobile equipment for removing PCB from environment. On the same day the company, leading operator in Serbia and the region in the field of waste industry, celebrated 50 years of business tradition, the experience for finding sustainable solutions for its clients, companies in variety of industries.
Total annual capacity of the centre is 10,000 tonnes of waste and its opening will create 30 new jobs, said Miodrag Mitrović, chairman of Miteco. After the refurbishment of the old facility, a line for recycling large industrial machines (transformers, engines, generators) was installed and the whole investment is worth EUR 2.3 million. “Many factories in Serbia are not working anymore and they had left behind chemicals and other waste that needs to be cleaned, so I think that is our future, considering that our industry is not working,” Mitrović told. “New investors are coming with new factories and we have to provide logistics for them”, he added. “Our plan for the next period is to invest in some waste-to-energy project,” Mitrović said.
Stana Božović, state secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection, said Serbia did a lot in the field of waste management during past two years. She stressed EUR 2 million is provided for disposal of hazardous waste from the companies under restructuring. Ministry analyzed more than 80 companies under restructuring or in bankrupt and is in talks with World Bank about helping in disposal of historical waste those companies accumulated, she added.
Peter Hodecek, representative of the European Federation of Waste Management and Environmental Services (FEAD), said it is the first center of its kind in Serbia, so it will contribute in recycling industry development in the country. FEAD’s members are national waste management associations of private companies covering 18 EU member states, Serbia and Norway.
The new recycling center is an example of successful privatization and brownfield investment, said Miroslav Miletić, Vice-president at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia. In his opinion, this project enables foreign investors and domestic companies to dispose of hazardous waste safely and at a low price. In Serbia, annual hazardous waste production is estimated at 100,000 tonnes, he added.
In the next 10 to 15 years, waste management in Belgrade will be worth more than EUR 750 million, said Goran Trivan, head of Belgrade’s Secretariat for Environmental Protection.
