Veolia, through its subsidiary Veolia North America, announces today that it has signed an agreement to take over Alcoa USA Corporation’s Hazardous Waste Treatment Site located in Gum Springs, Arkansas (USA). With this operation, Veolia continues the global expansion of its hazardous waste treatment and recycling activity, with a step further in North America, and adds a flagship site to its existing portfolio.
The facility, located on a 1,350 acre (5 km2) site, currently employs 70 people. The Gum Springs facility has traditionally treated spent pot liner, a hazardous waste byproduct of the aluminum production process, for the North American smelter industry. As part of its global growth strategy in difficult-to-treat pollutants, Veolia will be looking at expanding the type of waste, as well as volume, handled at the site, as it is already permitted for the treatment and final disposal of nearly all categories of liquid and solid hazardous waste. While remaining a key service provider to Alcoa through a multi-year dedicated agreement, the facility will also be expanding its services to customers throughout North America.
Veolia is the global leader in hazardous waste treatment, from collection to disposal to circular recycling and reuse. The company literally invented this activity in the 1970’s, to treat hazardous industrial wastewater and preserve the drinking water resource, notably the Paris river Seine. Today, Veolia treats and recycles around 6 million tons of hazardous waste - over 100.000 industrial, commercial or household clients, and employs 8,000 who operate a comprehensive network of more than 140 facilities on five continents. In Europe, Veolia operates the two biggest hazardous waste treatment sites of the continent.
In North America, Veolia’s hazardous waste operations notably support industries from pharmaceutical to petrochemical and other generators ranging from defense, healthcare and universities to households. The company notably operates four major incineration facilities on two sites in Texas and Illinois. Whenever possible, Veolia North America makes it a priority to recover and regenerate materials, like it does with sulfuric acid, one of the most important compounds made by the chemical industry used to manufacture hundreds of compounds needed by almost every industry. The integration of this facility and its disposal site into Veolia’s North American network will significantly increase the company’s North American treatment capacities and contribute to Veolia’s ambition of developing state-of-the-art solutions to protect the environment.
This transaction is valued at USD 250 million and closing is expected in the first quarter of 2020.
Veolia group is the global leader in optimized resource management. With over 171,000 employees worldwide, the Group designs and provides water, waste and energy management solutions which contribute to the sustainable development of communities and industries. Through its three complementary business activities, Veolia helps to develop access to resources, preserve available resources, and to replenish them. In 2018, the Veolia group supplied 95 million people with drinking water and 63 million people with wastewater service, produced nearly 56 million megawatt hours of energy and converted 49 million metric tons of waste into new materials and energy. Veolia Environnement (listed on Paris Euronext: VIE) recorded consolidated revenue of €25.91 billion in 2018 (USD 30.6 billion) www.veolia.com
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