Enva has commissioned a new construction, demolition and excavation waste recycling plant at its Walshestown facility in County Kildare, with safety built into the design alongside processing capacity and resource recovery.

The 180-tonnes-per-hour plant, developed with CDE, is designed to process up to 330,000 tonnes of CD&E waste a year at the 100-acre site near Naas. The development was reported by Hub-4.

Enva is a recycling and resource recovery business operating across Ireland and the UK. The company acquired Walshestown Restoration in 2024, adding the 100-acre facility to its waste management operations. Its wider activities span recycling, resource recovery and environmental services across multiple waste streams. Enva has positioned the Walshestown development as part of its wider investment in circular infrastructure.

Rather than simply upgrading the existing equipment, Enva opted for a new turnkey plant following visits to CDE installations across the UK and Ireland. The decision also created an opportunity to reconsider how operators would interact with the facility.

That is where the project has a particularly strong Health & Safety dimension. According to CDE Group, safety was considered from the earliest stages of the design process, including operator access, inspection, cleaning and maintenance.

For industrial Health & Safety teams, the approach demonstrates the value of addressing workplace hazards through engineering and facility design rather than relying solely on operational procedures. How equipment is positioned, how maintenance tasks are accessed and how frequently workers need to approach machinery can all influence the working environment.

The new plant combines CDE technologies including its R-Series feeding and scalping screen, AggMax scrubbing and classification system, RotoMax logwasher and EvoWash sand-washing system. Its water-management system can also recycle up to 90% of process water through the AquaCycle thickener, supporting more efficient resource use.

The facility produces recycled sand and aggregate grades for construction and infrastructure projects across eastern Ireland, as well as specialist applications including Punchestown Racecourse. Walshestown is also described as the only inert EPA-licensed lined landfill in South Leinster.

The development reflects a wider shift in how modern industrial facilities are being designed. Production performance remains important, but so are access, maintainability, resource efficiency and the conditions in which employees operate the equipment every day.

Enva managing director Richard Kennedy said the company's ambition was to create the safest wash plant in the world to operate and maintain. While that is an Enva objective rather than an independently verified ranking, it captures the thinking behind the project: safety was treated as a design requirement from the beginning.

For the sector, Walshestown provides a practical example of how safety by design can become part of the infrastructure itself, helping organisations create safer working environments while improving operational capability.

Source: Hub-4 / CDE Group / Enva