The Netherlands’ biggest waste processing group, AVR, is to join forces with major competitor, Van Gansewinkel, creating a company with a combined turnover of €1.1bn. AVR was sold by Rotterdam City Council last spring to private equity groups – CVC Capital Partners and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts – for €1.4bn.

The equity firms have now reached an agreement to buy all the shares in the privately-owned Van Gansewinkel – as long as the deal gets approval from the Dutch Competition Authority (NMa). Financial details were not made public but the Financieele Dagblad estimated the price was somewhere between €800m and €900m.
AVR booked turnover of more than €500m last year. The group has a workforce of 2,100 and processes over four million tonnes of waste on a yearly basis. It focuses on collecting household waste, separating rubbish and recycling – and is active in the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland.
Van Gansewinkel has a workforce of 4,000 and is active in various other European countries – including Poland, the Czech Republic, France, the UK and Portugal. The company was started by Leo van Gansewinkel, 68, in 1964.
‘This is a big step towards realising our ambition of… building up a trend-setting European environmental company,’ said AVR CEO Daan van Ouden. Van Ouden told the Financieele Dagblad the company was aiming for a bourse launch within a few years.