Pizzorno ceases operations in Oum Azza, Morocco

MOROCCO / FRANCE. The Var-based company Pizzorno Environnement (€218m sales in 2019) announced, on Tuesday 30 June 2020, the closure of the operation of the Oum Azza waste treatment and recovery centre, near Casablanca in Morocco. Entrusted to its Moroccan subsidiary Teodem in 2008 and for twenty years, it included a sorting centre, a biogas treatment plant and three transfer centres for the transport of waste. This recovery centre made it possible to close the landfills in Rabat (Akreuch), Salé and Aïn Attik.

Occupying 110 hectares, the site represents an annual capacity of 850,000 tonnes (the waste from thirteen municipalities in the Rabat - Salé - Skhirat region), for a turnover of around €6.8m in 2019.

The specialist in the environmental and circular economy sectors, working with local authorities and manufacturers, has signed an "amicable termination agreement" with the EPI (Etablissement de coopération intercommunale), with which it had been in disagreement since December 2019. This text takes effect on 1 July 2020.

 

According to the Moroccan press, the disagreements stemmed from the inability of the outgoing delegatee to find a radical solution to the problem of leachate treatment (300,000 m3 currently stored in the site's six basins), which gives off nauseating odours and has a negative impact on groundwater resources. Leachate is the residual liquid that comes from the percolation of water through a material.

The next delegate will not have to worry about leachate management. Its treatment will not be included in the call for tenders.

Present in Morocco since 1996, Pizzorno Environnement has three other contracts in this country: the collection and cleaning of Marrakech (Medina and Place Jémaâ El Fna), the collection, cleaning and treatment of household waste in Al Hoceima and the treatment of household waste in Moulay Abdellah.