Singapore-based waste management startup Blue Planet buys UK biogas energy company

SINGAPORE-BASED waste management startup Blue Planet Environmental Solutions has acquired Qube Renewables, which specialises in generating energy from locally occurring organic waste streams.

This comes shortly after the acquisitions of waste management firm Wah & Hua and disaster recovery and restoration firm Disaster Restoration, making Qube Renewables Blue Planet's third acquisition this year. It also marks its third UK acquisition and its third acquisition in the biogas or anaerobic digestion (AD) sector.

Established in 2013, Qube designs, builds and deploys small-scale energy generating systems powered by eco-friendly biogas, which are "particularly valuable in rural areas or developing countries where there are inadequate or unreliable centrally generated energy supplies", Blue Planet said in a press statement on Wednesday.

Madhujeet Chimni, founder and chairman of Blue Planet, said: "This strategic acquisition not only plays a key role in improving the efficiency of our existing anaerobic waste digestion and biogas production plants, but also extends our ability to deploy climate-friendly energy solutions into new, previously untapped markets."

Bradley Chew, Blue Planet director, said: "With this acquisition, we have considerably strengthened our capability to take on a broad spectrum of projects, large and small. It will also enable us to generate higher yields of biogas recovery from our other AD technologies."

Having three distinct AD technologies in its portfolio will create technological synergies and a cross-pollination of professional and technological wisdom, which will enable Blue Planet to provide customised organic waste management solutions based on the projects' size and nature all over the world, the startup said.

Blue Planet companies currently process more than 15,000 tonnes of waste per day across different projects, and have deployed more than 90 decentralised organic waste units of various sizes across South Asia.

The company also provides other services and technologies such as non-hazardous e-waste recovery, large-scale landfill remediation and green building waste solutions in Singapore, India, Malaysia, Vietnam and the UK.