A RECYCLING company plans to take on another 20 employees as it expands its European base in Nottingham.

Chinook Sciences is expanding its floor space at the iconic No.1 Nottingham Science Park development to provide room for growth, and plans to take on more than 20 skilled engineers.

The company moved to the Science Park building, developed by specialist regeneration company Blueprint, a year ago.

Now, the company is taking another 5,500 sq ft of Grade A office space on top of the 15,000 it already occupies.

It follows strong demand for Chinook's industrial renewable energy technology, which is known as RODECS.

The technology is a non-incineration, thermally-efficient and environmentally safe system to process a wide range of waste materials, recovering the energy to produce steam which is used to generate electricity, which is then exported to the national grid. Since the system gasifies waste, rather than incinerates it, metals can be recovered from the residue and recycled

Harry Perry, Chinook Sciences technical director, said: "It is an easy decision to invest at the Science Park with the pool of talent available in the region, and combined with the quality of the current workforce, we will be able to grow and fully support Chinook's wide ranging activity in the waste to energy field."

The new office space will allow Chinook to increase the support it offers to its partner facilities by further upgrading the remote command and control station with a combined worldwide plant service and monitoring facility.

Chinook says further investment in staff will complement the existing Nottingham-based engineering and project management group, adding expertise in thermal engineering and power delivery services.

Chinook's chairman and co-founder Dr Rifat Chalabi said: "With the success of Chinook's end-stage-recycling concept and our continued penetration into European and emerging markets, we are in an ideal position to take full advantage of the considerable technological leap that RODECS technology has in supplying highly efficient and low cost, renewable energy.

"The technology, with its three independent income streams, has shown tremendous resilience in the current economic climate, and continues to provide investors with attractive returns."

John Long, development director at Blueprint, added: "We've worked hard at Nottingham Science Park to develop a community of genuinely leading-edge innovators – some of the best in the region. Their continued success is a real pleasure to see as they excel here and expand.

"It's good for the park, of course, but more importantly it's good for Nottingham – these businesses are creating sustainable, high quality jobs in large numbers."