The Tom Wilhelmsen group of companies in Norway is setting out a blueprint for sustainability in construction materials, including the deployment of a wash plant designed and engineered by wet processing industry experts CDE. Liam McLoughlin reports.
Massebalanse Norge, the waste management division of pioneering environmental services company Tom Wilhelmsen Gruppen, commissioned its CDE waste recycling plant in 2022 at Disenå in Norway’s second largest county, Innlandet, around 70km from the capital Oslo.
Sustainability is imbued across the enterprise’s operations, both in the production and transport of materials.
Two years ago Massebalanse invested in a new 250tph C&D waste recycling plant from Ireland-based CDE. Now in operation for over a year, the plant has an annual capacity of 350,000 tonnes, it was CDE’s fourth C&D waste recycling plant in Norway and the latest deal to have been secured with strategic partner, Nordic Bulk, an expert in bulk material processing plants.
The investment came at the same time as the family-owned and operated firm was announced as an official climate partner in the city of Oslo, a certification which reflects its commitment to adopting sustainable practices to offset the environmental impact of its own operations and that of the Norwegian materials processing and construction industries as a whole.
In pursuit of that, the company committed to establishing a zero-emissions operation by 2025.
CDE’s washplant is playing a central role in helping Massebalanse fulfill the demand for sustainable construction materials. With a processing capacity of up to 250 tonnes per hour, the plant can accept a variable feed of excavated and contaminated soils to produce a range of new, saleable sand and aggregate products for the construction industry. The washing facility is located indoors in Massebalanse’s 5,200m3 building at Disenå, giving the opportunity to wash masses all year round.
The plant’s in-spec wet processed products, including six fractions of washed sand and aggregates, have applications in cement production, roadworks and other construction, infrastructure and public works projects.
Massebalanse’s Disenå site manager Trond Sørensen says the site recycled 180,000 tonnes in 2024, with a total of 320,000 tonnes targeted for 2025, increasing to the full 350,000-tonne capacity by 2026.
“The market for infrastructure projects has been bad in Norway recently because of inflation, and all the building projects have been stopped or cancelled,” he adds. “But now we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. More and more projects starting up right now, and we hope that everything is good in 2025.”
Major government projects with requirements for aggregates include a hospital in Oslo, providing demand for 50,000 tonnes, and two housing projects in the capital, adding an extra 100,000 tonnes in demand.
Another major project driving demand is the Fornebubanen underground train line extension, a 7.7km long tunnel system that connects Majorstuen to Fornebu, a suburb west of Oslo city centre. Fornebubanen is the largest tunnelling project in Norway since the 1970s, and when completed the line will include six new underground stations: Skøyen, Vækerø, Lysaker, Fornebuporten, Flytårnet and Fornebu. Started in 2020 and originally scheduled to finish in 2027, the project has since been delayed to 2029.
Each year three to five million tonnes of construction & demolition waste are created from projects in Oslo and the surrounding area, with the vast majority of this going straight to landfill.
Sørensen says that Massebalanse is currently considering changing some of its screens to make a revised mix of rock product sizes to meet ongoing construction market demands.
Eunan Kelly, CDE’s head of business development for Europe, says the open-minded approach of the Tom Wilhelmsen operation in deploying washing technology is refreshing to work with. “It is exciting to be working with a private entrepreneur who has a strong and optimistic vision of significant growth opportunities in the recycling sector. Our customers are trailblazers in implementing the circular economy through innovative washing technologies. Although there is still a long way to go, we are starting to see real change in the industry with the increased use of secondary aggregates.”
“Tom Wilhelmsen takes the chance, literally backs themselves, and it’s then about working out the market. You know you have the beast here to wash as much material as you can.
“If you were to say ‘build the ideal model for a green economy within the construction industry‘ this is what they would come up with – electric trucks and a recycling centre.”
Sørensen says the company lobbies government bodies and politicians about the potential of recycling aggregates, but it is hard work raising awareness: “We have to plant some seeds to make people understand this. It’s a new thing to recycle masses instead of putting them in landfill and taking up places where you can grow food. We can do something and we have to work really hard to get people’s eyes open to see that.”
Kelly says that the Tom Wilhelmsen companies are providing a blueprint for how an innovative, risk-taking and entrepreneurial business can translate talk of sustainability into concrete actions.
“The biggest contributor to landfill in Europe is construction and demolition waste. Everybody’s talking about recycling, reuse, net zero, carbon reduction, the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals protecting the planet, and here at the Massebalanse site, you have a private entrepreneur who has put all of that infrastructure in place,” Kelly adds. “There are electric trucks moving materials with minimal carbon output, you have material that’s continuing its life in the construction lifecycle by being re-processed to a state where it can be re-used with a specification equal to any construction materials being utilised in the Oslo market.”
Despite the difficulty in getting government recognition for their efforts, the Tom Wilhelmsen operation hopes to benefit from regulations implemented in Norway from the start of 2024 to promote sustainability in public procurement. Under the new rules, climate and environmental considerations must be weighted at least 30% in public tenders. This means that when evaluating bids, contracting authorities must prioritize environmental impact as a significant factor.
Truck electrification
As well as the proactive use of cutting edge washplant technology, electrification of its transport fleet is also at the centre of Tom Wilhelmsen’s sustainability vision. In 2020, Tom Wilhelmsen AS became the first transport company in Norway to use fully electric tipper trucks for construction operations. By 2023, it had doubled the size of its electric vehicle fleet as it responded to increasing demand for sustainably sourced and processed construction materials.
Tom Wilhelmsen, group manager at Gruppen AS & general manager of Tom Wilhelmsen AS (Tom Wilhelmsen group’s transport division), says that the company now operates 19 trucks in total of which 10 are small ‘intercity’ long distance trucks which operate without trailers and can carry loads of around 13.5 tonnes – these are suitable for the narrow streets in Oslo. The other larger trucks, referred to as ‘last mile trucks’, go from the project being undertaken to the Massebalanse Norge base in Disenå, around an hour’s drive from the capital Oslo. The company bought the site in 2007.
Sørensen says the company has a hub in Oslo to where it transports with the intercity trucks, and then the material being carried is transferred to the ‘last mile trucks’ and driven to landfills or to the Disenå recycling site.
Wilhelmsen adds: “With this mass hub we get good logistics because we can take clean stone with us back to the project. We have a philosophy that we don’t drive empty, we want a 100% load.”
The total fleet is now 19-strong and comprises Volvo FE trucks, Volvo FH’s, Volvo FMX’s and Scania P230 models. All the Volvo trucks are battery-electric-powered. The three Volvo FMX trucks each have a 540kW battery-pack, while the eight Volvo FEs have a mix of 200kW and 266kW.
The company still operates a few diesel trucks – the Scania ones – but its target is to be completely electric by 2025, although Sørensen says this depends on the ongoing support from the government as electric trucks cost twice as much as their diesel counterparts.
There is also a disused railway track at the Disenå site that is hoped to be re-commissioned for use in transporting materials.
Tom Wilhelmsen AS uses biofuels on its diesel trucks when contracts require it. “But we want to go all-electric because that’s the future,” says Sørensen. “How do you make biofuel? You make it by growing on land that you could use to produce food.”
“With the 260kW vehicles to charge it from zero to full is going to take a couple of hours, but normally we charge it when the driver is on his break,“ says Sørensen. “The normal break is 45 minutes, and we’re then good to go for three more hours before you have to charge. We actually charge to a limit of 70% rather than 100%. The vehicles are charged every night, so when they start they can be driven for four hours up to the when the driver takes a break.”
So what are the benefits of the electrification strategy in Norway? If a company is more sustainable and has electric vehicles, are you more likely to get the contract?
Wilhelmsen says this is the case, and cites a project the company has recently been involved in to build a children’s school in the centre of Oslo, which involved all-electric machinery including material haulers, diggers, plus crushing and screening equipment.
Sørensen adds: “Everything was electrified and the neighbours complained about the noise from the children and not from the machines!“
He is not a big fan of using hydrogen for construction vehicles: “The use of hydrogen fuel cells from my point of view is kind of a stupid thing because you need six kilowatts of electricity to produce hydrogen that produces one kilowatt. It’s much better with electricity.”