Sims Group acquires WEEE recycling business MIREC

Sims acquired the company – for a sum believed to be in the order of $65 million – from the waste management company SITA.

As part of the deal Sims has acquired MIREC operations in Dumfries and Fosse Crosse in the UK, Eindhoven and Echt in the Netherlands, Antwerp and Saint Niklaas in Belgium and Norkoping in Sweden. Other than Eindhoven and Dumfries, these sites are all used for recycling electronics, including a dedicated site for the recycling of cathode ray tubes at Echt.

For Sims the purchase allows the company to make inroads into the mainland European market, which it previously has had little involvement with.

Myles Pilkington, spokesman for Sims, said: “Through the new sites we have acquired we now have connections in France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Italy and Ireland. We have also added a new recycling plant in Georgia, USA as well, we consider ourselves one of the first truly multi-national recyclers.”

Experience
MIREC will bring with it WEEE processing capabilities in countries that have already implemented many of the requirements of the WEEE Directive, as well as direct experience with take back schemes and an extensive client base. Mr Pilkington said: “When added together, the two groups Sims and MIREC can improve our abilities to meet customer needs considerably.”

Sims chief executive Jeremy Sutcliffe said he expects Britain to generate around 240,000 tonnes of WEEE a year, twice the volume that MIREC currently handles. Mr Sutcliffe said: “What is very exciting is the WEEE scrap generation in the UK which, when it comes on stream in two or three years, will be vastly greater than the streams in the countries where we operate now.”

SITA's French parent company Suez will retain the rights to the MIREC name in France for the next three years and Sims will be working closely with it during this time.

Under the WEEE Directive, all Member States in the European Union have to pass legislation that will see producers taking financial responsibility for the collection and recycling of WEEE from August 2005.