The company has said it is “business as usual” while the merger with energy firm Gaz de France is ongoing.
Labour conference
SITA UK has confirmed that it has sponsored every pass and lanyard to be issued for the event running September 23-27 at the Bournemouth International Centre (BIC), and will also be providing a full recycling service.
A spokeswoman for French-owned SITA UK said: “We are providing the recycling service and are sponsoring the back for the passes and the lanyard that holds it round the neck. We are in the process of raising our profile and as Labour is in power, they are the focus at the moment.”
Neither organisation has disclosed the value of SITA's sponsorship of the Conference, but the deal will see the company providing a recycling service for plastics, paper and card.
SITA said it was also looking at providing food waste collections, but that the exact system is still to be decided, and would depend on security arrangements.
The conference sponsorship is not intended to reflect any political preference, the company said, but fitted with Labour's green agenda on the back of the new English Waste Strategy.
Speaking last week, the company's spokeswoman explained: “We have to work it out with the tight security. We will have recycling points around the conference centre and storage facilities but the bins have not been decided yet. We are visiting the site to see what space is available and to decide what to put where.”
“Business as usual”
As SITA prepared for the conference, the company stressed that there would be no changes in its management structure, despite plans by its parent company SUEZ to merge with another energy company, Gaz de France.
While this would create a powerful French-owned energy conglomerate, there is some uncertainty over the ownership of its waste and water activities as SUEZ said it had agreed to spin-off a 65% share in the activities of SUEZ Environment, the business division which owns the SITA waste activities across Europe and the rest of the world.
The environment division, which is also active in the water sector, has annual revenues of about £7.9 billion.
A spokeswoman for SITA UK said: “It will be business as usual for us and there are no changes in the management structure. The share offering is likely to happen early next year. The formalising of Suez Environment as a subsidiary gives us more visibility in the sector and will attract shareholders who wish to invest in the water or waste sector.”
Some waste sector commentators have suggested that the creation of a Suez Environment division with only 35% of the shares owned by Suez could lead to the creation of a separate business altogether or lead to its acquisition by another company.
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