Cleanaway waste acquires composting biz GRL
Waste company Cleanaway Waste Management has announced the acquisition of Global Renewable Holdings (GRL) for a cool $168.5 million. GRL is a NSW licensed composting facility that processes around 20 per cent of Sydney’s red bin household waste.
Cleanaway was looking to raise $400 million in shares on Friday through financiers Barrenjoey, priced at $2.50 a share. It is planning to use the remaining funds to update GRL’s facilities, including dropping $40 – $45 million on an enclosing structure to handle local residents’ complaints of its Western Sydney facility’s odours.
It also plans to convert GRL facilities to process only food organics and garden organics (FOGO) waste. The NSW government plans to implement a bin just for FOGO by 2030. Global Renewable Holdings
This comes as Cleanaway announced a 45.4 per cent slide in net profit after tax, citing flood disruptions including at a New Chum facility near Ipswich in Queensland, which shut down due to flood damage until next year.
The company has also purchased land in Victoria and Queensland to build two energy-from-waste plants by 2026 or 2027 at a cost of $2 billion.
Buyers circling Queensland’s $700 million BMI Group
Rumours are swirling around Queensland’s Balfour Irvine-owned waste business BMI Group, which reportedly is seeing interest from groups including Macquarie/Bingo, Cleanaway Waste Management and Veolia over a potential acquisition. There is apparently hot competition from private equity and infrastructure funds.
The group has an expected valuation of more than $700 million, the AFR reports. The company has waste facilities at Acacia Ridge, Mt Gravatt and Nudgee in Brisbane, north of the city at Lawnton, at Stapylton on the Gold Coast and at Swanbank in Ipswich.
The Fifth Estate reached out to BMI Group but did not receive comment by the time of publishing.
Bingo pleads guilty to price fixing
Waste management group Bingo Industries has pleaded guilty to “criminal cartel offences” relating to price fixing for demolition waste services in Sydney,” according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Former managing director and chief executive Daniel Tartak has also been charged with “two criminal cartel offences”, the ACCC said.
In 2019, the company allegedly agreed to increase prices for the supply of skip bins and waste processing services for building and demolition waste in Sydney, alongside competitors Aussie Skips Bin Services and Aussie Skips Recycling.
“When companies arrange to fix prices, they usually do so to increase their profits, and it is consumers that pay the increased cost,” ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.