Northstar Recycling Co. acquires Sonoco Sustainability Solutions

East Longmeadow, Massachusetts-based Northstar Recycling Co. (previously profiled in Recycling Today), an asset-light provider of sustainability-oriented managed waste and recycling solutions, has announced the acquisition of Sonoco Sustainability Solutions LLC. (S3), a service provider of customized waste diversion programs in Hartsville, South Carolina. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.  

“We are pleased to be joining forces with S3 to expand our combined capabilities, customer base and subject matter expertise,” says Northstar’s CEO Seth Goodman and President Noah Goodman in a joint statement. “S3’s business model is highly complementary to that of Northstar, and this acquisition enhances the combined business’ ability to serve current and future customers and vendors at scale. We welcome the S3 team to Northstar and look forward to working together to continue to provide differentiated solutions to our combined customer base.”   

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According to Northstar, S3 has operated during the last 17 years as a division of global packaging leader Sonoco. Northstar and S3 serve multi-facility manufacturers and distributors across the food, consumer packaged goods and industrial sectors with a centralized solution to manage and divert industrial waste streams into beneficial reuse applications. Northstar is a portfolio company of Ridgemont Equity Partners, a middle-market private equity firm. 

“S3 and Northstar have shared the same mission for many years, which is to help develop innovative and executable strategies for companies to reduce their environmental footprints and increase their sustainability efforts by turning material waste into a material resource,” says Palace Stepps, president of Sonoco Recycling LLC. “S3’s combination with a market leader like Northstar elevates and further substantiates the important work that the S3 team has been pursuing for nearly two decades on behalf of Sonoco’s clients given our mutual commitment to redefining waste streams." 

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Ridgemont Equity Partners, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based buyout and growth equity investor, made a growth investment in Northstar Recycling, alongside the company’s founders, brothers Seth and Noah Goodman.

At the time of the investment, Seth and Noah Goodman told Recycling Today that Ridgemont was a strategic partner that could help identify and prioritize organic growth opportunities as well as growth through acquisitions and add-on investments.