ISC has scooped a £34 million contract by the Cory Group (Cory) to build a Waste Transfer Station (WTS) facility by the River Thames in Barking.

ISC, the contracting arm of materials group GRS, is the principal contractor for the River Road waste scheme, a key part of Cory’s Riverside 2 development, a new energy-from-waste (EfW) plant that will divert 550,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from landfill a year, and generate electricity for the equivalent of 176,000 homes.

Barking WTS will provide additional capacity for handling and transporting waste destined for Riverside 2, which is currently under construction in Belvedere on the south side of the river. Uniquely, Cory transports the majority of the waste it processes via its fleet of tugs and barges on the River Thames, removing around 100,000 lorry movements from London’s roads every year. Riverside 2 is expected to remove another 80,000 lorry movements.


The project involves modernising some of the existing site facilities, reactivating a Safeguarded Wharf and delivering a new purpose-built industrial WTS building on a designated Safeguarded Waste Site. The modernisation of the site represents a substantial investment by Cory, which currently processes waste for nine boroughs in London and the South East.

One of the two berths, Rippleway Wharf, is to be reconstructed to allow container stacking and the loading of barges. That means the modernised waste facility will move waste operations from road-to-road to road-to-river and will result in a reduction in waste vehicles on the road.

In line with Cory's use of river freight, ISC will use Thames barges to remove most of the of demolition waste, spoil and dredged material for recycling, as well as for the delivery of aggregates and other construction materials.