BRITAIN’S first dung-driven power station is facing closure despite generating enough electricity for 1,000 homes from little more than cowpats.

The project, which has won several environmental awards, was funded partly by the taxpayer but was forced into administration after the German company that built the plant went bust.

The plant was also facing a £250,000 bill to contain unpleasant smells seeping from its giant slurry pit.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the European Union met half the cost of the £7.7 million project but Farmatic Biotech, which designed and built the plant, held the controlling stake. The company went bust in March last year and in January its main creditor, HSH Nordbank, called in a £2.8 million loan to the plant at Holsworthy, north Devon.

Bryan Lewens is chief executive of Holsworthy BioGas — slogan: It’s good for you and made from poo. He said: “We had no choice but to go into administration. More money was needed to build new tanks and contain the smells, and negotiations with the bank broke down.

“The plant was something we believed in and we thought we could make it work.

“My family and I put in £25,000 which, with the benefit of hindsight, wasn’t the best move in the world. But the Holsworthy plant is still a going concern, and I hope it will eventually work.”

Although the local council and many residents welcomed cowpat power, and still hope for a district heating main to the town, others objected to the odours generated by the plant.

Mr Lewens said: “The odour-control system wasn’t good enough. One of the tanks wasn’t gas-tight. There was a certain amount of leakage. It can smell unpleasant.”

Graham Johnson, the company’s chief engineer, who also lost £10,000 in the scheme, blamed the plant’s German builders for “bodging” a membrane on a slurry tank.

He admitted: “We have had bad odours. Not so much in the past year but in the summer of 2003 it was bad. There are houses four or five hundred yards away and it was not pleasant for them and it was unpleasant for us at the plant as well.”

The anaerobic digestion plant, which produces enough electricity for 1,000 homes, will stay in production until the administrators, Stoy Haywood, can find a buyer.

Lorries carry slurry daily to the five-acre site from 26 farms, as well as waste food from the Cornish pasty firm Ginsters and blood from local abattoirs. The waste is pasteurised, fed into an anaerobic digester and converted into biogas, which makes electricity and liquid fertiliser. The business turned over £1.3 million last year and estimates an operating profit of £360,000 for the next.

The directors say that a quarter of a million pounds is needed to build a second slurry tank and install more odourresistant glassfibre roofs. Simon Michaels, the administrator, said: “There have been a number of expressions of interest in the company since we put it up for sale.”

ENERGY THE NATURAL WAY

The liquid biofertiliser created from the process contains more plant nutrients and is 100 per cent organic

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