Industry News

Mergers & Acquisitions

Cards purchases Texas, Missouri haulers for third, fourth acquisitions in 2023

Cards Holdings Inc., an independent waste, recycling and temporary service provider serving the mid-South, has announced its acquisition of Barnes Waste Disposal, a residential waste hauler based in Princeton, Texas, and J&J Refuse, a residential waste hauler based in Springfield, Missouri, that serves the state’s Greene County. The Springdale, Arkansas-based company did not disclose terms of the deals.

The Barnes and J&J acquisitions are the company’s third and fourth, respectively, during the past several months. Both enable Cards to enter new markets.

Barnes provides collection, hauling and disposal services to commercial, residential and municipal customers in Collin, Hunt, Dallas and Rockwell counties in Texas.

Norman Barnes founded Barnes Waste Disposal nearly 20 years ago. The firm now has 16 employees, almost 8,000 subscription residential customers and 17 trucks. It serves three municipalities.

“We are grateful to take over what Norman has built and expand the company’s presence while continuing to provide premium service to our customers. ... Our intentions are to merge the business through our integrations team and the assistance of Jada Graff, [the] current Barnes Waste Disposal general manager,” says Cards CEO Dan Christensen.

Joe and Rosetta Valdez founded J&J Refuse nearly 30 years ago with a truck and trailer to offer premium service to Springfield residents.

The Valdez family has expanded the business to more than 1,100 customers.

“This acquisition addition to the growing Cards family is both logical and strategic,” Cards Chief Revenue Officer Dustin Reynolds says of the J&J deal. “They expand our service area and strengthen our presence in the four-state area. ... Cards will continue to provide the same exceptional quality of service and further expand our services in southern Missouri.”

In April, the company announced the purchases of Chelsea, Oklahoma-based Johns Refuse LLC, which provides residential and commercial services in the greater Tulsa, Oklahoma, market, and Muskogee, Oklahoma-based Whittinghill Disposal Services, a key competitor in the commercial and industrial waste hauling services sector.

Cards also is on the cusp of opening its largest postcollection facility in Springdale, including a transfer station and a single-stream material recovery facility. The site will serve northwest Arkansas by processing recyclables, solid waste and construction and demolition materials.

Materials to be processed at the new site include mixed paper, cardboard, Nos. 1-7 plastics, aluminum, tin, glass and junk mail, as well as brick, block, wood, shingles, sheet rock and more.

Following its acquisition by New York City-based Kinderhook Industries LLC in March of this year, Cards has quickly increased the pace of its merger and acquisition activity.

“The market dynamics of the mid-South region are incredibly appealing. Cards’ core geography is experiencing strong population growth driven by increased commercial and industrial production,” Sam Keenan, a principal at Kinderhook, says of Cards’ growth strategy. “We plan to hit the ground running and anticipate rapidly deploying capital ... to grow the team and invest in collection and post-collection infrastructure.”

MRFs

Balcones Resources breaks ground in San Antonio

Balcones Resources, headquartered in Austin, Texas, broke ground on a new material recovery facility (MRF) at 6006 Freeport Rd. in San Antonio April 5. 

Speakers addressing those in attendance included Balcones CEO Adam Vehik and Chief Commercial Officer Joaquin Mariel, as well as San Antonio’s District 4 Council Member Dr. Adriana Garcia-Rocha, San Antonio Director of Solid Waste David Newman and San Antonio Deputy Director of Solid Waste Josephine Valencia.

The city of San Antonio awarded Balcones its municipal recycling contract last year, kicking off the development of the Balcones Resources Recycling Campus. The contract will begin in August 2024.

The recycling facility represents a $61 million investment in San Antonio’s recycling program, Balcones says. The MRF will process residential and commercial single-stream material and will feature the latest in sorting technology from CP Group, San Diego, including auger screens that eliminate the presort station. A CP Primary Auger Screen will scalp 6-inch-minus material, and two patented old corrugated containers (OCC) auger screens will scalp 8-inch-minus material to produce a clean OCC end product. These three machines are upstream of any sorters, allowing for sorting efficiency of fractionated material streams, according to CP Group. 

Material then is sent to a four-deck glass-breaker screen and LightsOut Air Drum Separator to remove and clean glass. The material then goes through two high-volume disc screens, a CP AntiWrap Screen for the midsize fraction and a CPScreen for small fraction material, which liberates conjoined material and fines. Disc screens split material by mechanical properties so the downstream automated sorting equipment can achieve the highest efficiencies, CP Group says.

Five MSS FiberMax optical sorters will use different sorting recipes, depending on the unit’s position in the MRF, to positively sort fiber, OCC and contaminants

On the container line, three MSS PlasticMax optical sorters will sort polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene and polypropylene.

A magnet will remove ferrous material, and an eddy current will remove any nonferrous material.

Two MSS AI (artificial intelligence) units will be used to conduct quality control on PET and aluminum container lines.

The MRF also will be equipped with three balers: one single-ram for cardboard and two two-ram balers. Each commodity has the opportunity to reach two balers for redundancy.

With a processing capacity of more than 50 tons per hour, the MRF will support the city’s zero-waste goals and serve as a community resource, equipped with an education center for outreach initiatives and drop-off options for materials not accepted in the curbside program.

“I was very intrigued about [this project] because of the education center and specifically the viewing gallery,” Garcia-Rocha said. “As an educator, I am always happy to be able to tell our students how we do things. This [recycling campus] is near three school districts.”

“Our industry is plagued by a lot of misinformation about what works in recycling and what doesn’t,” Vehik said. “And we want to be a resource that allows you to really understand what is going on in the recycling world.”

Balcones says the campus design prioritizes employee wellness and safety, while the equipment features the latest technology to ensure Balcones produces the highest-grade material possible. All recyclables will be marketed in North America, prioritizing Texas-based companies. 

The company says it will create approximately 70 new full-time environmental jobs in San Antonio to operate the facility.

“This is a source of pride,” Vehik added. “We care about recovering as many recyclables as we can, and we care about building strong partnerships with our customers. Everything we do we take a lot of pride in, and we hope that is something that can be shared with the city of San Antonio.”

Earnings

WM keeps profits rolling in Q1

Houston-based waste and recycling firm WM has reported a net income increase of nearly 5 percent during the first quarter of this year compared with a year ago. The company says its collection and disposal yield rose, but its recycling operations suffered from a drop in commodity prices.

“Our performance to start 2023 delivered results in line with our expectations, keeping us on track to achieve the full-year guidance provided at the end of January,” WM President and CEO Jim Fish says. “In the first quarter, our teams executed well, delivering organic revenue growth in the collection and disposal business of 7 percent.”

WM’s collection and disposal yield was 6.2 percent in this year’s first quarter compared with 5.5 percent in the first quarter of 2022.

The recycling market was not as kind to WM in the first three months of this year. WM says operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) in its recycling business unit declined by $42 million compared with the first quarter of 2022, which was “largely in line with expectations.”

WM’s operating EBITDA in its renewable energy business declined by $20 million compared with the first quarter of 2022, primarily driven by decreases in the value of renewable fuel standard credits and lower energy prices. Those declines were offset by modest gains in materials collection and disposal.

Across its operations, inflation was a factor, WM says, citing an increase in operating expense margin compared with the prior year “primarily due to wage increases, the impact of inflationary cost pressures on repair and maintenance and subcontractor costs and margin dilutive impacts from recently closed acquisitions.”

Looking ahead, Fish says, “As we move into the second quarter, where we begin to see the seasonal uptick in our business, we remain laser-focused on our three top priorities for the year—cost management and leveraging technology and automation to drive permanent cost reductions, disciplined pricing and execution on our sustainability growth investments.”