New owners for waste pioneer
A TEESSIDE waste management firm has been sold in a multi-million pound deal.
The Yorkshire Bank-backed buy-out of Middlesbrough’s UK Resource Management (UKRM) for an undisclosed sum will release cash for further research into industrial waste handling, the firm said.
Over the past two years UKRM has spent £2.5m in doubling the size of its South Bank plant, increasing its workforce as it piloted recycling solutions for industry, including returning treated waste as biomass for small-scale boilers being built on industrial estates.
The deal gives York-based E Harper Ltd, which also operates a facility at Billingham as Harpers Waste Management, a foothold in the specialist waste treatment sector for the first time and creates a national firm with 110 staff and £12m turnover. All 26 UKRM staff will be retained.
UKRM commercial director Phil Rodgers and operations director, Andy Welford, join the combined board, while directors, brothers John and Robert Jones, have left the business.
The deal was advised by accountants and business advisers, JWPCreers, and commercial law firm Dickinson Dees, which recently established a specialist waste team.
Phil Rodgers, said: “Harpers has major infrastructure and long-standing expertise. We add specialist services in waste treatment and recycling.”
Harpers chairman, Nick Harper, added: “Acquiring UKRM enables us to directly carry out specialist waste treatment, disposal and recycling which we previously provided as a third-party service, which added to our operational costs. This includes the collection and recycling of materials from vehicle workshops, such as the washing and return of oily hand wipes, and we will be seeking to develop these, and other, services which have vital environmental benefits.”
Harpers, which has more than 80 staff and an £8m turnover, provides services including high-pressure water jetting, air-conveying for powder and sludge collection and also has mobile sludge de-watering units and high-performance, high-tipping vacuum tankers.
UKRM, which was founded in Middlesbrough in 2000 and has 26 staff and a £3.5m turnover, operates nationally for blue-chip manufacturing, automotive, pharmaceutical and chemical businesses, developing waste treatment for renewable energy and recycling as an alternative to landfill or incineration.
Head of the corporate finance department at JWPCreers, Tony Farmer, said the acquisition showed that “significant deals can be completed in the current climate”.
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