Veolia signals growing interest in scrap metal

In November 2007, Veolia revealed that it had signed an agreement to buy the rapidly expanding Bartin Recycling business, which has activities in a number of sectors, including aircraft dismantling. Much of the company's material is exported to China.

The completion of the purchase of Bartin is subject to competition authority clearance and would be followed by finalisation of sale details potentially by early February.

While the company is looking to grow its French scrap activities, a spokeswoman for Veolia in Paris said: “Besides internal growth, the next steps in the roll-out of our strategy could of course include selected acquisitions in European countries.”

In November, the company said that the acquisition of Bartin recycling Group, the French number three in the recovery and recycling of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, is in line with Veolia Environmental Services' strategy of “turning waste into a resource. In the continuous development of our business in the recycling segment, we could purchase other metal recycling companies on a case by case and opportunity basis.”

UK

With expertise in paper and plastic recycling, UK waste management companies are increasingly seeing scrap metal as a material to add to their portfolio, especially with their access to civic amenity sites.

SITA UK has already made a major purchase in the sector buying Easco and now other metal recyclers have told letsrecycle.com that they foresee more companies bought by waste firms. As a consequence, SITA UK is now a member of the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA).

Lindsay Millington, director general of the BMRA said: “The commercial reality of metal recycling is that the structure has been changing year by year, especially in the face of all sorts of end of life directives. Legislation tends to favour larger enterprises.”

In the UK, Veolia is already heavily involved in one side of the scrap chain with its activities in the oil rig decommissioning sector. With SBS Logistics the company has recently expanded its operations at SBS' Greenhead decommissioning pad in Lerwick, Shetland as part of their joint contract with Aker Kvaerner.

Aker Kvaerner Offshore Partner has delivered an 8,800 tonne module support frame by barge from TOTAL's Frigg field for decommissioning resulting in an upsurge in activity at the £1.2m SBS Logistics site.

Part of an anticipated 16,000 tonnes of steel expected over the whole project, Veolia is responsible for decommissioning of the module support frame from a major treatment and compression platform. The consignment consists of process units, pipelines, pressure vessels and oil tanks.