Spotlessly clean through the crisis

Saubermacher Dienstleistungs AG, Austria’s leading waste disposal and recycling company, is continuously developing very successfully. Regardless of the turbulent macroeconomic development, the company recorded its best year ever in company history in 2009. The volume of waste as well as the turnover could be increased further: thus, the volume of waste disposed of by Saubermacher in 2009 increased by almost 4 % to 2.7 million tons, and the turnover increased by 3 % to 246 million EUR. Simultaneously, the number of employees was increased from previously 3,377 to 3,733.

Company founder and CEO Hans Roth: “Within the scope of the initial public offer sought two years ago, we announced sustainable profitable growth. We kept this promise – even in times, when many companies had to make drastic cuts. In parallel to that, we made extensive investments – e.g. into an innovative workshop waste splitting plant – and also continued our research and development activities with unbroken intensity. The R&D costs to the amount of 1.7 million EUR we spent, which is considerable for the waste disposal industry, prove that. Thus, we remain true to our motto “Growth with Responsibility”, which expresses our generally sustainability-oriented attitude: a business model set up for the long term, which also does not lose sight of the responsibility towards society and environment.”

Over the past two years, Saubermacher also continued its expansion course within Austria and abroad: nine acquisitions as well as two new foundations increased the operating range of the group further and in Romania and Bulgaria, the aimed at market entry has been achieved. In addition to that, the revenues from the business with substitute fuels could be clearly increased. Used as a substitute for conventional fuels (like coal) for the generation of process heat in industrial companies, waste is thus increasingly developing into a resource. On the basis of clear increases in demand and quantity, in 2009, 30 % of the waste disposed of by the company in Austria were already supplied to energetic utilisation in the form of substitute fuels.

Frank Dicker, COO: “Our strategy to increasingly focus on industrial use instead of conventional waste combustion has thus been confirmed once again. With this business segment, we have created a more and more important additional pillar of our business. The model is just being expanded to hazardous wastes, where we see interesting additional potential. By the way, the entire concept is also very attractive for the environment: each year, we currently save around 150,000 tons of CO2 emissions.”

CFO Mag. Erhard Schmidt sees the fact that Saubermacher is that successful even in times of crisis justified in several factors: “On the one hand, certainly it is the very robust business model, which focuses on industrialisation, professionalism and risk spreading due to a customer basis as wide as possible. On the other hand, beside the expansion mentioned already and additional contributions from the business with substitute fuels, we score with continuous innovation in our service portfolio. Thus, with Aqua Services (quality-assured channel maintenance) and the recycling of waste electronic equipment we launched interesting new offers in 2009, too. And finally we were able to implement an intelligent programme for crisis management very quickly, which even strengthened us further. Instead of cost cutting, we placed the focus on increase in efficiency and long-term capacity assurance and are thus very well set up for further growth. Therefore, we look to the year of 2010 with optimism. An investment budget of 40 million EUR is good evidence for the high dynamism, which will continue to characterise our business. We will use these funds for new waste management centres in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Southern and Eastern Europe (SEE), the new location in Vienna, an expansion of waste electronic equipment recycling as well as the continuation of our internationalisation course.”

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