Mr Bill McCabe, one of the State's richest technology entrepreneurs, has bought a 50 per cent stake in an US waste facility that turns organic waste into compost that can be sold and reused.
He has also bought the global rights to the technology which the facility uses from a Swedish firm Bedminster AB, and plans to set up similar composting operations across the Republic.
Mr McCabe, who made €65 million profit from selling shares in e-learning firm SmartForce, has set up a Dublin-based firm called Bedminster International (Ireland) to develop the new business idea in the Republic.
The firm plans to bring the Bedminster process - a patented technology developed in the US which converts organic waste into compost via a natural biological method - to the Republic.
The process works by placing organic waste in a huge revolving drum containing organisms that can break it down into a crude compost within just three days. The compost is then cured for a few weeks, after which it can be sold on as fertiliser for agriculture.
There are at least 12 waste facilities modelled on the Bedminster process worldwide, including sites in the US, Sweden, Canada and China. But there is no such large scale plant based on the technology yet in the Republic.
Mr McCabe's new Irish company was registered in Dublin in March shortly after he bought a 50 per cent stake in a US landfill operator based on Nantucket island in the US. Bedminster, until this week called Waste Options, has a $1 million (€920,000) capital structure divided into one million shares each worth $1 each.
Financial details of Mr McCabe's US transaction have not been released but the Nantucket Independent newspaper reported last week that the owner of the landfill, Mr Charles Gifford, said Mr McCabe was a 50/50 partner in the firm. "He is not a backer, he is a partner. He has a lot of business expertise that we hope will allow us to further our opportunity in Ireland," states the article. Mr Gifford could not be contacted by The Irish Times yesterday for further comment.
Waste Options, the US firm that operates the Nantucket landfill, had previously bought the rights to market the technology in the Republic. It is believed this was key to Mr McCabe buying a 50 per cent stake in the US firm.
Mr Pearse O'Kane, a director of the Irish registered firm Bedminster International (Ireland), said it wanted to bring the technology to Ireland to solve a worsening waste crisis. "The technology can reduce the requirement for landfill considerably in the Republic by taking out the organic component of any waste," he said. "It can also be used to help clean up existing landfill sites and increase their lifespan."
Mr Pearse, an old friend of Mr McCabe, believes similar waste problems face Ireland as those that faced Nantucket in the mid-1990s, when the island ran out of landfill space. To overcome this developing waste crisis in 1997 the town of Nantucket signed a 25-year contract with Waste Options to implement an integrated solid waste disposal programme. This was intended to clean up the existing landfill, and begin recycling and composting.
The estimated amount of materials recycled and diverted from landfilling is almost 80 per cent. Waste Options developed its composting site based on the Bedminster process, which has resulted in landfilling no more than 20 per cent of all materials.
A recent report by the Construction Industry Federation highlighted similar waste problems in the Republic, with many areas including Dublin in danger of running out of waste disposal capacity within five years.
Mr Bill McCabe, originally from Belfast, is one of the State's richest technology entrepreneurs. His venture capital company, Oyster Technology Investments, holds stakes in several small developing firms, including the Irish technology firms Transware and WS2.
