And the Hunter businessman behind the project believes cloak-and-dagger moves are being made to protect a monopoly. 

About 1500 leaflets opposing Weston Aluminium’s plan to burn 8000 tonnes of medical and hazardous waste each year have been dropped into Hunter letterboxes.

Redlam Waste Services, the Wollongong-based company behind the leaflet drop, holds a $6 million waste contract with NSW Health. It also does business with SteriHealth, the company which owns the state’s only approved medical waste incinerator.

The Weston project would be SteriHealth’s only competitor in the medical waste incineration market in NSW.

Weston Aluminium managing director Garbis Simonian was surprised to learn Redlam was behind the leaflets. He said he was under the impression Redlam’s managing director Rick Jones had shown support for the Weston Aluminium project as recently as Wednesday morning.

Mr Simonian said he initially understood Redlam was not responsible for the leaflets.

After hearing that Redlam was behind the campaign, he said he wondered if SteriHealth had held any discussions with Redlam about the company’s position.

“SteriHealth has a monopoly in NSW on thermal waste destruction of medical waste, with the only approved facility operating at Silverwater,” he said. “It would be in their commercial interest to stop us and maintain their monopoly.”

The leaflet outlined technical concerns and argues there was “no pressing need to approve an additional clinical and related waste treatment facility in NSW”.

It encouraged residents to file their own submissions, and some came with a pre-addressed envelope attached.

Mr Jones declined to comment when Fairfax Media first contacted him, and instead referred questions to waste consultant Rob Sharp.

Mr Sharp said he was enlisted to prepare a submission on behalf of Redlam that outlined concerns about the Weston proposal.

 He agreed that the Weston project could be a future competitor for Redlam.

“No one is running away from the fact it would be a competitor,” Mr Sharp said.

Mr Jones did not respond to attempts to contact him again on Thursday.