First ship engine oil treatment plant in Serbia, worth EUR 1 million, opens in Kladovo

The first waste ship engine oil treatment plant in Serbia, worth EUR 1 million, was opened yesterday in Kladovo.

- This project is of exceptional significance for Serbia because all ship engine oil has so far been dumped to the Danube, which will now stop - said Minister of Environment, Mining and Spatial Planning Oliver Dulic.

He said that "there are no more explanations and excuses for ships not to stop in Kladovo and solve the problem of waste oil they produce".

- This is the only plant of this kind in Serbia, but it is big enough for the capacities of the country's navigable waterways - Dulic stressed.

As he added, Serbia has so far been the only Danubian country without such recycling center.

Dulic also explained that, once processed, the recycled oil would be used in the production of asphalt. He reminded that an obligation of all restaurants and other entities producing waste oil was to recycle it.

Director of Delta recycling center Mladen Gencic said that the plant in Kladovo would be annually processing between 3,000 and 5,000 tonnes of waste oil.

Gencic pointed out that the processing capacity would depend on the quality of oil and that it would be bigger if the oil quality was higher.

Minister of Environment also stressed that "recycling is a profitable branch of economy" and that that was realized by "all those who invested in recycling plants in the previous period".

- Thanks to the new ecological policy, 8,000 jobs have already been created in the recycling industry, and it is expected that a total of 10,000 people will be employed in the recycling industry and in the field of renewable energy sources by the end of the mandate of the current government - said Dulic.