Indian firm eying waste management project in Africa's Burundi

Waste management machinery manufacturer Pyrocrat Systems, which deals with Navi Mumbai's solid waste, said on Thursday it is in talks with the east African nation of Burundi to set up one of the largest recycling projects in a public-private partnership basis.

This is intended to be in similar to the company's present project to manage 300 tonnes waste per day in Navi Mumbai.

The proposed project will be established near (Burundi's capital) Bujumbura, and will be converting solid waste of Bujumbura into organic compost, refuse derived fuel and recyclables, said Pyrocrat's chairman and managing director Subhas Dixit.

"The project is expected to be operational by October 2016," he said.

Noting like India, a majority of African countries do not segregate waste at source, Dixit said that solid waste, a mixture of bio-degradable and non bio-degradable material, can be recycled if segregated effectively and his company believes it can work with Burundi to resolve this issue.

Pyrocrat looks forward to establishing large scale waste projects for the purpose in Africa.

Besides Africa, the Mumbai-based company is also planning to tap a reasonable share of $170 billion waste management market of developing nations over next three to five years.

"Like Burundi, we are in talks with various levels of government agencies as well as with private companies in Middle Eastern countries and Southeast Asian nations like Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia among others," Dixit said.

"With this venture, the company is expecting almost 4-5 fold jump in revenue over next two to three years," he added.