Anaerobic Digestion Plants UK — A Guide to Notable Biogas Plants

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is one of the UK’s fastest-growing renewable energy sectors. As of early 2026, the UK operates 756 active AD plants, collectively processing around 36 million tonnes of organic waste annually — producing enough biomethane to supply electricity to millions of homes and delivering nutrient-rich digestate as a sustainable biofertiliser for farmland.

Plants fall into two broad categories: agricultural (using manures, slurries, crops and crop residues) and waste (using municipal, commercial, and industrial food and organic waste). Their biogas output is used either for heat and power (CHP) on-site or upgraded to biomethane and injected into the national gas grid.

Below is a curated list of some of the UK’s most significant AD plants.

Large-Scale Waste AD Plants

1. Biffa — Poplars AD Plant, Staffordshire

One of the UK’s most efficient food waste processing AD plants, the Poplars facility in Staffordshire is operated by Biffa, a waste management company with over a century of experience. The plant generates up to 6.5 MW of electricity and provides a single-point solution for both packaged and unpackaged food waste streams.

2. ReFood (PDM) — Widnes, Cheshire

The ReFood plant in Widnes is among Europe’s highest-capacity food waste AD facilities, processing an impressive 160,000 tonnes of food waste per year. It operates three combined heat and power (CHP) engines that convert biogas into 4.2 MWh of renewable electricity. The plant has 50% more capacity than ReFood’s Doncaster site and represents a flagship example of large-scale food waste recovery.

3. Dong Energy (now Ørsted) — Lostock Works, Northwich, Cheshire

The Lostock Works plant was the first full-scale bio-plant in the world capable of handling household waste through a combination of enzymes, mechanical sorting, and anaerobic digestion. It processes around 120,000 tonnes of waste per year — equivalent to waste from approximately 110,000 households — and generates between 5 MW and 6 MW of renewable electricity annually.

4. Essex County Council / Material Change — Courtauld Road AD, Basildon, Essex

This joint facility between Biffa treats household food waste collected by local Essex authorities. It combines anaerobic digestion with in-vessel composting (IVC) to treat kerbside-collected mixed food and garden waste, producing agricultural soil improver, liquid fertiliser, and biogas, with surplus injected into the National Grid.

5. Metis Construction — Imperial Park, Middlesbrough

The Imperial Park plant in Middlesbrough is designed for high feedstock flexibility, accepting various types of organic waste. The generated electricity is fed into the National Grid, while the heat produced is used to maintain digester temperatures at 40°C and to pasteurise the digestate to a standard suitable for agricultural land application.

6. H2Energy / 2 Sisters Food Group — Willand AD, Devon

Located in Willand, Devon, this bio-refinery is the result of a collaboration between Liverpool-based H2 Energy and leading food manufacturer 2 Sisters Food Group. The facility integrates food manufacturing waste streams directly with AD technology, demonstrating how the food production industry can close its own energy and waste loops.

7. Severn Trent Green Power — Derby AD Facility, Megaloughton Lane

Following a 12-month refurbishment programme completed in 2024, this Derby facility resumed operations with expanded capacity — now treating up to 50,000 tonnes of unavoidable food waste annually. It produces enough energy to power almost 7,000 homes per year and supplies liquid biofertiliser to local agricultural outlets. The project was delivered by Severn Trent Green Power in partnership with Agrivert Ltd.

8. Severn Trent — Minworth Biogas, Birmingham

The Minworth facility is a landmark in UK renewable energy as the first plant to inject biomethane directly into the national gas grid (from 2015). Located near Birmingham, it processes sewage sludge via advanced AD technology and in its first nine months of operation, injected approximately 40 GWh of biomethane — enough to heat around 3,000 homes. The project paved the way for widespread biomethane grid injection across the country.

9. Severn Trent — Strongford (Stoke-on-Trent) & Stoke Bardolph (Nottingham)

As part of a £15 million investment, Severn Trent built biomethane plants at Strongford Sewage Treatment Works in Stoke-on-Trent and Stoke Bardolph Sewage Treatment Works in Nottingham. Each plant produces up to 500 m³ per hour of biomethane from sewage sludge and food waste. Together, the green gas generated at all three Severn Trent sites is enough to heat more than 8,000 homes per year.

BioteCH4 Network (Yorkshire, Lincolnshire & Shropshire)

BioteCH4 owns and operates a cluster of interconnected AD sites across England, with a strong focus on tankered food waste from local authorities, food manufacturers, and retailers.

10. Hemswell Biogas, Lincolnshire

Located on a 5-acre site in rural Lincolnshire, Hemswell Biogas produces both gas and electricity from food waste. The facility can handle up to 140,000 tonnes of food and organic waste per year, making it one of the largest single-site AD facilities in the East Midlands.

11. Local Generation, Cambridgeshire

A state-of-the-art AD facility set on a 7-acre plot in Cambridgeshire. It transforms food waste into renewable biogas, producing up to 17 MWth of renewable biogas per year from a capacity of 120,000 tonnes annually. It accepts local authority waste, retail food waste, manufacturing waste, oils and fats, and animal by-products.

12. R100 Energy, Goole, Yorkshire

Situated less than a mile from BioteCH4’s Changing Waste transfer station, R100 Energy processes up to 90,000 tonnes of tankered organic waste per year, generating up to 11 MWth of biogas. The site is a key node in BioteCH4’s Yorkshire network.

13. Holme Bioenergy, Holme, Yorkshire

Located on an 8-acre site in Holme, West Yorkshire, this facility handles up to 80,000 tonnes of food waste annually, producing a further 11 MWth of biogas. Together, BioteCH4’s three Yorkshire sites have a combined capacity to process 250,000 tonnes of food waste per year.

14. Thornfield Energy, Telford, Shropshire

BioteCH4’s Shropshire site handles 90,000 tonnes of food waste annually, producing up to 11 MWth of biogas. It serves food manufacturers, producers, distributors, waste management companies, and local authorities across the Shropshire and West Midlands region.

Biogen Network (England, Scotland & Wales)

Biogen is one of the UK’s leading AD operators, with over 20 years of experience and a network spanning England, Scotland, and Wales. The company processes more than 150,000 tonnes of local authority food waste annually and generates over 300,000 MWh of green energy per year. All sites share a common operational model: food waste is collected, depackaged, and fed into digesters to produce biogas, which is then used to generate renewable electricity or upgraded to biomethane for grid injection. PAS110-certified liquid digestate is supplied to farmers as a biofertiliser.

Biogen’s network of AD plants includes:

• Twinwoods, Bedford
• Bygrave, Baldock, Hertfordshire
• Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire
• Fairfields Farm and Halstead, Essex
• Manor Farm, Towcester, Northamptonshire
• Merevale, Atherstone, Warwickshire
• Holbeach, Lincolnshire
• Retford and Stragglethorpe, Nottinghamshire
• Basingstoke, Hampshire
• Weston-super-Mare, Somerset
• Millerhill, Dalkeith, Scotland
• Tornagrain and Wester Kerrowgair, Inverness, Scotland
• Bryn Pica, Aberdare, Wales
• GwyriAD, Caernarfon, Wales
• Waen, St Asaph, Wales

Agricultural & Historic AD Plants

15. Wyke Farms, Somerset

Wyke Farms holds the distinction of operating the earliest known agricultural biogas plant to inject biomethane into the national gas grid in the UK — a pioneering step that predated most utility-scale projects. The farm-based plant uses dairy waste and energy crops, aligning its cheese-making operations with a fully circular energy model.

16. Ludlow Demonstrator Plant, Shropshire (Historic)

Built by Greenfinch Biocycle (now Biogen) for a DEFRA-funded “Waste Technologies Demonstrator Programme”, the Ludlow plant was the first purpose-built dedicated food waste AD plant in the UK, opening in 2004. It was this government-funded experiment that kick-started the UK’s food waste AD industry. The plant has since been mothballed but retains significant historic importance.

The Ludlow AD Plant – Built by Greenfinch/Biocycle (now Biogen) for the Defra demonstrator project. © Defra/ Greenfinch

17. Longstock, Hampshire

A smaller-scale agricultural plant using technology from Bioplex Ltd, with a throughput of approximately 1,500 tonnes per year. Feedstock consists of agricultural residues and animal waste slurries, representative of the many farm-scale digesters operating across rural England.

18. Milton Ernest, Bedfordshire

Operated by Bedfordia Farms Ltd using Bioge technology, this plant accepts Animal By-Products (ABP) categories 2 and 3. It has a reported throughput of around 42,000 tonnes per year and is a well-established example of a privately operated, farm-linked AD facility.

19. Smerrill Generating Station, Gloucestershire

Completed in April 2008 by Kemble Farms, this plant is located beside the Smerrill Dairy and produces both electricity and heat from cow slurry and energy crops. It represents the early wave of farm-scale CHP digesters that emerged following the introduction of Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs).

Future Biogas Network

20. Gonerby Biomethane Plant, Lincolnshire

A flagship project by Future Biogas in partnership with AstraZeneca, the Gonerby plant is the UK’s first unsubsidised biomethane plant dedicated to supplying the life sciences sector, becoming operational in 2025. It demonstrates that biomethane production can be commercially viable without government subsidy when long-term offtake agreements are in place.

Future Biogas has been active for over 15 years and operates a wider network of agricultural biomethane AD plants powered primarily by locally grown rotational energy crops. The company is also exploring the integration of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to make future plants carbon-negative.

The Scale of the Anaerobic Digestion Plants – UK Locations (2026)

Sources: ADBA Plant Database (August 2025), NNFCC Biogas Map, Biogen, BioteCH4, Future Biogas, Severn Trent Green Power, Hydro Cleansing.

Where Can I Find Data on UK AD Plants in Operation?

A few years ago WRAP provided a UK AD Plant map, which was kept up to date, with an invitation to all active AD Plant operators to enter details of their own plants. That disappeared in Summer 2021.

The NNFCC website at first appeared to have taken on the responsibility for providing these details here.

On that page, it states, “Click here to open the map in a new window,” and the database is available, but it had not been updated since 2021, when we looked during May 2026.

Although, as a UK government-funded organisation, it would be expected that WRAP would maintain the most up-to-date data on UK AD Plants. That does not now appear to be true.

AD Industry Trade Association ADBA does still maintain a record of UK AD Plant numbers and locations, but this is also no longer available to the public. Their anaerobic digestion plant list and the map showing each plant's location would appear to be the most authoritative source for UK anaerobic digestion plants. But it can only be viewed by their members.[/soc_panel]

Scroll down further on this page to where we also provide historic lists of early biogas plants as a snapshot of the early days of Anaerobic Digestion plant operation in the UK.

A Historic List of the First 100 Pioneering UK Biogas Plants

For more about anaerobic digestion plants UK, scroll down further, and you will see our historic information on UK biogas plant numbers over the last decade.

Municipal, Commercial, and Farm-Based anaerobic Digestion Plants UK, AD Plant Number Reaches 100 – in 2013

The following is our version of the list which appeared in 2013, on the Biogas Info website maps page, when the number of UK plants had just risen to a magic 100 for the first time!

The point at which 100 UK operational biogas plants were reached was seen as a milestone at the time. It indicated that a fledgling UK biogas industry had become established.

The period of the highest rate of growth in the capacity of UK AD plants occurred in the period 2013 to 2017. The Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association (ADBA) reported that 100 biogas plants were built during 2016, and 10 years later, that year still holds the record for the highest number of UK AD plants built.

Since 2017, the industry has seen a slowdown in growth in the UK, and in that year, the majority of AD plants built switched from electricity-generating plants to upgraded plants producing biomethane, and with many of those feeding their methane into the natural gas grid.

List of the First 100 Anaerobic Digestion Plants in the UK in 2013

Anaerobic Digestion Plants UK – Plants in January 2011 (England and Wales)

The following may not be on the list of the first 100 AD Plants above, and are included for their historic interest:

1. Wanlip Leicester as part of a Biffa MRF. Operated by Severn Trent.
   Water (BIFFA). Accepts biodegradable Municipal Waste. 1.5 MW potential power output. Operational large-scale plant Approx. 35,000 tpa.
2. Woking Council, Surrey – Preliminary pre-contract discussions.
3. South Shropshire Council, DEFRA Waste Technologies Demonstrator Project. This partly DEFRA-funded Waste Technology Demonstrator Plant, in Ludlow, Shropshire, has been mothballed.
4. Longstock, Hampshire – The technology provider is Bioplex Ltd. Feedstock is agricultural residues and animal waste slurries. The throughput is about 1,500 tpa.
5. Milton Ernest, Bedfordshire – Bioge technology plant operated by Bedfordia Farms Ltd. Accepts Food waste (ABP 2+3). Operational plant with a reported throughput of 42,000 tpa
6. Rushden (Westwood), Northamptonshire CC, Biogen Food waste 1.5 MW, Under development 41,000 tpa
7. Wareham, Dorset – In-vessel composting Operator SITA. Feed will be Bio-waste. This plant is under development
8. South East London – Operator would be Veolia – Food waste. thought to be at the feasibility study stage.
9. Doncaster, South Yorkshire –  Initial stages.
10. Honiton – Otter Rotters Ltd
11. Elgin – Integrated Bio-Gen Ltd – early stages
12. Bank Farm – Operated by Clive Pugh (Private Ind.) 790 m3 Operational plant
13. Eye Airfield, Eye, Suffolk – 1.05 MW. Not yet built, but fully consented
14. Dimmer – Wyvern Waste Services Ltd, 3 MW. – Not yet built, but fully consented
15. Lowe Farm – 0.5 MW – Not yet built, but fully consented
16. Longstock, Hampshire – Operator Bioplex Ltd. Technology Bioplex Demo Plant 0.0075 MW. Currently operating
17. Horsington, Somerset – The technology provider was Organic Power, a demo plant
18. Cambridge Research Park/ Waterbeach near Cambridge – Operator Summerleaze, and technology also by Summerleaze.
19. Swang Farm, near Bridgwater, Somerset. Operator Tim Roe (MD) Cannington Cold Stores
20. Sandford, Whitchurch, Shropshire; Lower College Poultry Farm
21. Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority, North Manchester plant – Enpure Ltd – Greater Manchester
22. Greater Manchester, Bredbury Parkway; plant by Enpure Ltd -MSW – Under development
23. Leicestershire CC (Estates Dept) – Feasibility study for a central AD Plant
24. Stockport, Manchester – Design by Greenfinch Ltd. Operation to be by Fairfield Ltd.
25. Update October 2008
26. GR Lancashire UR-3R process- 2 plants under construction, Leyland and Thornton
27. Biffa/ Clarke, West Sussex, Hasse process, 1 facility at preferred bidder
28. SRM/NEWS    Norfolk CC Contract A  AMBT with Dranco/OWS AD process near Final Closure
29. Oaktech,  Glendale /Falkirk, Arrowbio process 1 facility under construction. Thanks to Rob W
30. Coca-Cola's manufacturing facility in Warrington, UK,  incorporates an anaerobic wastewater treatment facility, dating from the early 1990s.
31. BV Dairy Shaftesbury, Dorset, will generate more than 75% of the site’s electricity consumption with a new Anaerobic Digestion (AD) system. The high-rate liquid digester has been designed and built by Clearfleau. EnerG is supplying the equipment to convert the biogas into energy.
32. Dalkia is delivering its energy generation and carbon efficiency capabilities to Dairy Crest by designing and installing a biomass energy centre at the Davidstow Creamery in Cornwall.
33. In April 2008, Kemble Farms completed the Smerrill Generating Station.  Located beside the Smerrill Dairy, it produces Electricity and Heat from the cow's slurry and energy crops.
34. As announced on 13 December 2010, TEG  was developing a new anaerobic digestion (“AD”) and in-vessel composting  (“IVC”) plant in Dagenham, East London, which is expected to be in operation in 2012.  The Mixed Waste was planned to be processed at the Dagenham plant from 2012.

We hope this information about the anaerobic digestion plants UK-wide was useful to you. Please give us your feedback in the comments box below.

More UK anaerobic digestion-related links

You may also be interested in reading more about UK Anaerobic Digestion. If so, the following posts may interest you:

1. UK Anaerobic Digestion Incentives — Biogas Plant Grants and Subsidies
2. UK Biogas Funding for Biofuels — CHP, RO, FiTs and RHI (Looking Back 10 Years)
3. UK Government RHI Subsidy Scheme and the Future of Biomethane
4. Feed-In Tariff Closing — UK Government Fails to Support Biogas Renewable Energy

Also, you might find the following links useful, to our blog articles that feature anaerobic digestion plants UK:

1. Anaerobic Digestion UK Capacity Powers 3 Million Homes — Update
2. Anaerobic Digestion UK Food Waste News 2023 Update
3. Biogas UK
4. UK Government Champions Biomethane Energy Transition
5. What was the RHI? The UK Renewable Heat Incentive that Closed in 2022
6. The Methane Digester UK Story: Efficient Biogas & Waste Management
7. UK Biogas Energy Targets — New Vegetable Farm AD Plant Case Study
8. 25 Years of UK Biogas History 2025 — Rise of the AD Industry
9. UK Dry Anaerobic Digestion May Soon Come to England

[Updated in August 2021. Last Updated in May 2026.]