History
The ARBRE Biomass Facility, essentially a biomass power plant, was initially proposed in 1998 by the then Energy Minister, John Battle MP, as somewhat of a (very) little brother to the coal fired power station not half a mile down the road from the proposed location of it. The project was started by Kelda (the holding company of Yorkshire Water), although they sold their green energy division in 2000 and then sold the ARBRE plant to Energy Power Resources Ltd in around May 2002, with an understanding that they would continue to financially support the plant for as long as it was considered economically viable.
The plant, designed to burn coppice willow, had only been producing electricity for eight days on 2 August 2002 when it was announced that the firm owning it had become insolvent, due to Kelda reneging on their offer of ongoing financial support only a couple of months after it was agreed.
Whilst there were attempts to save the plant both by the local MP, John Grogan, and one of the MEPs for Yorkshire and the Humber, David Bowe, ultimately nothing was successful and the closure resulted in around 24 job losses, whilst also leaving 35 farmers, who had signed 16 year contracts to supply the plant with wood, completely high and dry with acres of coppice they were not able to sell. Moreover, it ultimately wasted £13m of investment that the UK Government and EU put into it during construction.
In May 2003, the site was sold by the receivers, PwC, to an American firm based in New Hampshire, Biodevelopment International, for £3m. Whilst the company stated that they had no firm plans on what to do with the site, they suggested that they might dismantle and ship the large parts of the factory abroad to be reconstructed. Whilst, from walking round the site, this appears not to have happened, ENDS Waste and Bioenergy stated in 2015 that “much of the process equipment, wiring and other useful components have long since been either sold or stolen.”.
Based on various news articles and Google Earth satellite imagery, it appears that Hargreaves Services took over the site somewhere between 2007 and 2013 as a hub for their haulage business.
In May 2015, planning permission was granted for the plant to be converted to a waste gasification facility, to be run by DRENL, who had a long term lease for the site with Hargreaves. Construction and conversion work was expected to begin in January 2016, although this appears not to have happened.
The site was vacated by Hargreaves sometime between August 2016 and July 2017, and since then it has laid empty.
Explore
This is probably one of the only explores I've found completely of my own accord; whilst there are a few news articles and webpages online (from which I have found the history) I can't find any other reports of this place on here or any other forums. Unfortunately my visit was cut a little short, so not everything is covered, but from the photos you should be able to get a sense of what kind of place it is. It doesn't have the same feel to it as older industrial buildings such as the mill down the road, or British Extracting in Hull for example, but it is nonetheless a decent explore. I would advise against visiting here yourself, however if you do, I would suggest that you consider avoiding the platform on the roof - it is quite exposed and within view of pretty much all of Eggborough.
Photos
. And I know... I'm not even 100% sure that it produced electricity at all. Different news articles on it had conflicting information, so this is probably something only a former employee could confirm. All in all seems it seems a bit of a scandal though!
