MPIC mulls LGU tie-ups for waste-to-energy facilities

MANILA, Philippines — Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) plans to tie up with local government units in the provinces for the construction of waste-to-energy facilities, its top executive said.

These facilities would be similar to what MPIC proposed to put up in Quezon City.

“We are looking at provincial LGUs,” MPIC president and CEO Jose Ma. K. Lim said in a recent briefing.

For Quezon City, MPIC has submitted an unsolicited proposal to build a 40 megawatt waste-to-energy facility.

The infrastructure conglomerate hopes to be able to jumpstart the project, possibly within the year, after it goes through the whole process, including taking up a Swiss Challenge.

The proposed facility will utilize waste from the Payatas dumpsite in Quezon City and convert this into energy.

The Quezon City project would marks MPIC’s first venture into such a project, but Lim said the technology they would employ has long been used and proven successful in different power plants.

The plant would handle about a third of the solid waste of Metro Manila.

Lim said it may not necessarily be the same scope and size for the different provincial LGUs they are targeting.

But he said having such a facility would be a good option for LGUs in treating their waste.

“There are many ways to treat waste,” he said.

The company has been venturing into other businesses and not just tollways and infrastructure.

In 2016, it announced its foray into the logistics business through the acquisition of the assets of several logistics companies.

The conglomerate, through its newly formed subsidiary MetroPac Movers Inc. (MMI), earlier acquired the assets and key contracts of Basic Logistics Corp., A1Move Logistics, Inc., Philflash Logistics Inc. and BasicLog Trading and Marketing Enterprises, all of which are involved in the logistics business, at a  total purchase price of P2.17 billion.