PEFCO

South Canterbury has another waste-fuel proposal on the table. Different company, different technology — but there is something strangely familiar about where the rubbish comes into the story.

Redruth has been here before

In November 2021, while SIRRL was developing its controversial rubbish incinerator near Waimate, director Paul Taylor approached Timaru District Council with a proposed Heads of Agreement involving ERP Group, which was already baling waste intended for the proposed plant.

The proposal was remarkably specific. ERP wanted up to two hectares at Redruth for an initial three years to store baled rubbish, including 24-hour access during the first four months while 12,000 bales were relocated from Christchurch. SIRRL’s proposed plant needed around 50,000–70,000 tonnes stockpiled for commissioning and another 50,000 tonnes each year maintained on rotation as a feedstock buffer.

The proposed agreement said TDC would assist ERP by providing land at Redruth, with the aim of:

“helping secure a long term and close relationship with REL and SIRRL for future disposal options.”

It also contemplated Timaru’s own waste becoming part of the arrangement, stating:

“When it suits Timaru DC, REL would be happy to arrange disposal of their domestic and commercial waste directly to the plant once it is operating.”

TDC said no!

Council said that storing refuse for more than six months would expose it to liability it was not willing to accept.

Five years later, another company proposing to turn rubbish into fuel has arrived with a remarkably familiar request: Redruth, two hectares, municipal waste and baled-waste storage.

This time it’s PEFCO.

Its original proposal sought two hectares of Council land at Redruth, a 20-year lease, municipal red-bin and transfer-station waste and:

“Speed, Commitment & Ongoing Partnership.”

The processing plant has since shifted to private land at Washdyke, but Redruth hasn’t disappeared. TDC says PEFCO has continued seeking Council land there for temporary storage of baled waste associated with the Washdyke operation.

Different company. Different process. Remarkably familiar request.

That leaves Council with a fairly obvious question. Five years ago TDC said storing baled waste at Redruth exposed it to a liability it wasn’t willing to accept.

What has changed?

Waste-to-fuel, not waste-to-energy

PEFCO wants to take red-bin and transfer-station waste, process it into fuel pellets at Washdyke and sell those pellets to industrial users looking to replace coal with what the company claims as a “green” alternative.

The company is adamant this is not waste-to-energy.

That distinction gets more interesting when you read what founder Carl Storm told the Ministry for the Environment in September 2025:

“I have on very good advice changed my company name from waste2energy to PEFCO.”

Storm doesn’t say who supplied that “very good advice”, but perhaps the past five years have taught anyone trying to sell another waste-related energy proposal in South Canterbury one thing: “waste-to-energy” isn’t exactly a phrase that opens doors around here.

Timaru District Council appears equally careful with the terminology. Its own record of the March workshop describes “the waste-to-fuel (not waste-to-energy) technology” and later repeats that it is “waste-to-fuel … not electricity generation.”

Whatever the label, the more useful question is what happens to the rubbish in the end.

And PEFCO needs an awful lot of rubbish

The proposed South Canterbury plant would process around 165,000 tonnes a year, producing about 140,000 tonnes of pellets.

Timaru households generate about 6,150 tonnes of kerbside rubbish annually — just 3.7 per cent of PEFCO’s proposed feedstock requirement. That isn’t the entire local waste stream, but it gives some idea of the scale.

This isn’t simply a plant for Timaru’s rubbish. It needs Timaru to become what PEFCO itself calls:

“Timaru Waste Hub.”

Storm has been fairly clear about the feedstock. In an email to Zero Waste he said PEFCO didn’t want FOGO, recycling-stream material or construction and demolition waste. What it did want was:

“everything that is in the red bin or black bag waste.”

He also said PEFCO hoped its first South Canterbury plant would result in the closure of “a few small landfills anyway.”

A very large and continuing supply of residual rubbish isn’t incidental to the project. It’s fundamental.

And all that rubbish has to get here somehow

PEFCO says waste would move to the “Timaru Waste Hub” by road and rail, specifically naming Temuka Transport and KiwiRail as partners. Its presentation to TDC even envisages pellets being delivered to Christchurch customers with waste returned as a backload.

Rail may help with longer-distance freight, but it doesn’t answer the more local problem.

PEFCO originally wanted to build its facility at Redruth before shifting the processing operation to private land at Washdyke. TDC later confirmed that PEFCO still sought Redruth land for temporary storage of baled waste associated with the Washdyke operation.

There is no evidence that rubbish making the relatively short journey from Redruth through Timaru to Washdyke would be put on a train.

A plant consuming 165,000 tonnes a year needs about 450 tonnes of incoming waste every day of the year. At an indicative 20–25 tonnes per truck, moving that volume between Redruth and Washdyke would equate to around 18–23 loaded truck trips a day, or approximately 36–46 heavy-vehicle movements once the return journeys are counted.

That is before waste arriving at Redruth, direct deliveries from elsewhere, rail transfers or the movement of finished pellets are counted.

That isn’t a prediction that every tonne will pass through Redruth — we don’t know how much will. And that’s precisely the point.

At full production, at least 305,000 tonnes of waste and finished pellets would move into and out of the operation each year. How much travels by road? How much by rail? Which roads carry it? Will infrastructure need upgrading, and if so, who pays?

Calling something a “Timaru Waste Hub” is easy enough.

Working out what a waste hub looks like on Timaru’s roads is another matter.

The rubbish is “contracted”. But from where?

PEFCO says Waste Investments Limited has contracted to provide the entire 165,000 tonnes a year.

“Contracted” sounds reassuring. It sounds rather less informative once you look at who contracted with whom.

Waste Investments was incorporated in July 2025 with Carl and Dawn Storm as directors. Almost all of its shares were held by Pacific Waste Holdings Limited, another company directed by Carl and Dawn Storm and itself overwhelmingly held through a shareholding involving the Storms and Waste Investments Trustee Limited. Waste Investments has since changed its name to The Dump Limited.

There is nothing inherently wrong with related companies contracting with each other. The point is simpler: the paperwork tells us who has promised PEFCO the rubbish; it still doesn’t tell us where the rubbish is coming from.

That becomes even more interesting when you read what PEFCO’s Chief Operating Officer Vin Smith told MfE about the company’s national ambitions. He said New Zealand had capacity for around seven plants — five in the North Island and two in the South —

“without triggering a municipal waste trade war.”

“Municipal waste trade war” is quite a phrase. It also quietly acknowledges the problem: plants like this compete for a finite supply of rubbish, while councils are simultaneously supposed to be reducing the amount of residual waste they produce.

Then we get to Timaru District Council

PEFCO wasn’t simply asking TDC whether it would welcome another factory to Washdyke. Its original presentation sought two hectares of Council land at Redruth, a 20-year lease, municipal red-bin and transfer-station waste and:

“Speed, Commitment & Ongoing Partnership.”

Council’s involvement began well before the March workshop. TDC says PEFCO first approached it in December 2025, confidentiality arrangements were established, and over the following months Council supplied information including maps and waste data while discussing land, waste volumes, consenting, landfill impacts and potential governance and investment roles.

By February, “PEFCO facility at Redruth (PX)” had appeared in TDC’s formal Development and Growth Committee work programme, alongside work on Washdyke industrial capacity, port connections and electricity demand.

Then came the closed March workshop, where one purpose was:

“…to test the willingness from council to enable the company to progress the project in the region.”

“Enable” is doing quite a bit of work in that sentence.

PEFCO had asked for land, waste and an ongoing partnership; feasibility work had been underway for months; and Council was now testing its willingness to help the project progress.

Perhaps TDC has asked all the difficult questions that go with that. The trouble is, the public has very little way of knowing.

More than 450 records — and a $2,640 bill to see them

When Why Waste Waimate sought the wider information surrounding TDC’s dealings with PEFCO, Council identified more than 450 records potentially within scope and estimated that processing them would cost $2,640.

Those are not 450 direct PEFCO emails — the request was broader than that — but they are still a substantial documentary footprint for a project the Timaru public has heard nothing about.

We also know some of the withheld material is significant. Council identified four documents directly concerning PEFCO, another two dealing with landfill volumes and bale-storage options, and a report and recommendations considered in public-excluded session on 28 April. TDC resolved that the April material would remain excluded while the non-disclosure agreement with PEFCO continued.

Why Waste Waimate asked Council to reconsider. We specifically pointed to the public interest around waste management, bulk waste transport, environmental effects, landfill strategy and the effect on Timaru residents, and asked whether the information could at least be partly released, summarised or disclosed with targeted redactions.

Chief Executive Nigel Trainor maintained the withholding, saying Council’s commercial grounds continued to apply and that the public-interest test had been considered.

Council has been engaged with PEFCO for months, substantive reports exist, and residents trying to understand the proposal face a $2,640 charge while some of the most important documents remain withheld.

Apparently there is plenty of information about PEFCO. There just isn’t much incentive for Council to make it public.

How green is “Green Energy”?

PEFCO promotes its product as a lower-carbon alternative to coal, but Storm went further when he approached MfE. He described what PEFCO wanted to produce as:

“Green Energy from non recyclable waste that is currently going to landfill.”

“Green energy” is a useful phrase if you are selling a fuel. Whether it accurately describes the fuel depends rather heavily on what is in it.

Storm has already told us the starting material is “everything that is in the red bin or black bag waste.” Timaru’s own kerbside audit found around 36 per cent organic material and 17 per cent plastic, alongside paper, sanitary paper, textiles, timber and other waste.

PEFCO says it will remove glass, metals, inert material, CCA-treated timber and chlorine-containing plastics. What it doesn’t say is that all fossil-derived plastic disappears.

And plastic doesn’t become renewable simply because it has spent some time in a rubbish bin and then gone through a pellet machine.

PEFCO says municipal waste is around 70 per cent biogenic, but we have seen no analysis establishing the actual fossil-to-biogenic composition of the finished South Canterbury pellet.

PEFCO’s own mass balance is revealing. Of 165,000 tonnes entering the plant, around 140,000 tonnes — 85 per cent — is expected to leave as fuel. Whatever is removed during processing, the overwhelming majority of the incoming material is intended to become something that can be burned.

“Lower carbon than coal” and “green energy” are not necessarily the same claim.

Government officials noticed the fossil-carbon problem too. MfE recorded that emissions would arise from combustion of the fuel, including CO₂ from fossil components described as “plastics mainly.”

For PEFCO this wasn’t academic. Vin Smith said clarity over ETS treatment was “critical” to supply agreements the company was discussing.

Storm’s own argument was that after processing the material was:

“no longer waste, not RDF but process engineered fuel.”

PEFCO’s own website now asks much the same question:

“When does waste stop being waste?”

It’s a good question. In fact, it’s essentially the same question PEFCO had already put to the Ministry for the Environment and EPA. Carl Storm argued that after processing the material was no longer waste, while PEFCO’s Chief Operating Officer Vin Smith pursued clarification of how the finished pellets would be treated under the ETS.

And PEFCO got an answer.

EPA’s position was that processing discarded material into engineered fuel does not change its underlying character as waste. When those pellets are ultimately burned for heat or electricity, the activity is treated under the ETS as combustion of waste.

Yet PEFCO’s website now answers its own question rather differently. It declares:

“Waste STOPS BEING WASTE”

and says the resulting pellets have:

“a zero or at worst a minimal ETS rating.”

Steam sterilisation may change the condition of the rubbish. PEFCO also proposes removing some materials during processing. But steam sterilisation doesn’t turn fossil-derived plastic into renewable carbon, and the processing didn’t persuade EPA that the material had ceased to be waste for the purposes of its eventual combustion.

So when does waste stop being waste?

PEFCO asked the regulator. The answer it received doesn’t appear to be the answer it is now giving the public.

The rubbish arrives as waste. PEFCO processes it and gives it a new name. It leaves Timaru as pellets. But when somebody eventually puts those pellets into a boiler, EPA says they are still burning waste.

The chimney may have moved. The waste hasn’t.

Who gets the chimney?

EPA says the ETS obligation would generally sit with the industrial operation doing the burning rather than PEFCO making the pellets.

And PEFCO says somebody has already agreed to burn an awful lot of them.

The company claims to have a customer signed to take around 400 tonnes every day for 20 years — essentially the output of the proposed Timaru plant.

Who that customer is has not been disclosed.

We could speculate. We won’t.

What matters is that PEFCO says somebody has made a 20-year commitment to burning essentially the entire output of the Timaru plant. EPA says that customer would generally carry the ETS obligation associated with combustion.

So does that customer know exactly what is in the pellet?

Timaru should probably know too, before importing the rubbish to make it.

Some familiar faces

PEFCO may be a new name in the South Canterbury debate, but some of the people involved are not.

Carl Storm has a long history with WasteCo, where he was previously a director and remains a shareholder. WasteCo itself appears in the history of SIRRL’s Project Kea proposal.

In December 2022, while Storm was involved with WasteCo, the company provided SIRRL with a letter supporting its Waimate incinerator proposal and offered to receive a waste by-product at a disposal facility WasteCo was developing.

There was one complication: the facility did not yet exist. WasteCo said it was still at the design stage.

That doesn’t make PEFCO an extension of Project Kea. It simply shows that Storm’s involvement around South Canterbury’s waste-to-energy story predates PEFCO.

There is another connection through PEFCO Chief Operating Officer Vincent “Vin” Smith, former chief executive of the West Coast Regional Council. Smith is involved in PEFCO’s consenting work.

It is Why Waste Waimate’s understanding that SIRRL previously employed his services in relation to consenting its Waimate incinerator proposal. We have not independently established the precise nature or extent of that work and don’t take the claim further than that.

There is also a small irony in PEFCO’s own presentation to TDC. While everybody is being particularly careful to describe the project as waste-to-fuel rather than waste-to-energy, PEFCO describes Smith as having:

“extensive regulatory, waste logistics, processing and waste-to-energy infrastructure knowledge.”

Timaru first — then elsewhere?

PEFCO isn’t presenting Timaru as the end of the story.

Smith told MfE New Zealand could support around seven plants, and said chemical-composition information had been shared with prospective companies and various ministers. He also reported:

“The Ministers are very keen on the economic opportunity.”

The scale isn’t trivial. Smith put the expected cost of each plant at around $150 million in 2025; Storm later described the South Canterbury project as a $100 million plant. We don’t know whether that reflects a change in scope or simply different estimates, but either figure makes this a major industrial development.

PEFCO has also attracted government-backed financial support. Storm says the company was awarded a $1 million interest-free Ara Ake loan, of which $400,000 was advanced before the Government’s decision to end Ara Ake funding left the remainder uncertain.

None of this suggests anything improper. What it shows is momentum.

PEFCO says the waste is contracted. It says a customer is signed for 20 years. A Washdyke operation is being progressed. Consenting work is underway. Government money has been committed. Ministers, according to Smith, are interested in the economics. And PEFCO is talking about a national network rather than a single Timaru plant.

Yet Timaru residents still don’t know where most of the waste will come from, what the final truck and rail movements will look like, what Council is being asked to provide, or how far consenting has progressed.

We don’t know whether applications have already been lodged, whether they will be publicly notified, or whether Fast-track approval is being considered.

Those aren’t accusations. They’re unanswered questions.

And timing matters. By the time a consent application appears, a site can be secured, finance arranged, waste contracted and customers committed. Being allowed to comment on the environmental effects at that point isn’t quite the same thing as being asked whether Timaru wanted to become a regional waste hub in the first place.

Council’s own record says it met PEFCO behind closed doors:

“…to test the willingness from council to enable the company to progress the project in the region.”

After months of confidential discussions, hundreds of records, substantive documents still withheld and a project apparently moving towards consent, perhaps it’s time to test something else:

the willingness of Timaru residents to progress this project.