Dive Brief:

• WIN Waste Innovations acquired New England Recycling (NER) and New England Waste Disposal (NEWD) in Massachusetts, two affiliated businesses, last week. Financial terms were not disclosed.
• NER runs a C&D recycling facility, transfer station and roll-off container business out of Taunton, Massachusetts. NEWD runs a rail-served transfer station in Taunton. 
• In December, WIN Waste also acquired the Taylor County Landfill from GFL Environmental in Mauk, Georgia. This site is equipped to accept MSW and C&D, including via rail transfer.

Dive Insight:

New Hampshire-based WIN Waste has been an active buyer since it was formed last year by combining the companies formerly known as Wheelabrator Technologies and Tunnel Hill Partners, both of which Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets had previously acquired. This month's New England transaction is its fifth deal in the region during that time and comes with a set of hard-to-replicate post-collection assets in an area known for its disposal capacity limitations.

“We are excited to acquire the NER and NEWD entities to expand our collections, transfer and roll-off capacity in Southeastern Massachusetts," CEO Robert Boucher said in a statement, adding the expansion of C&D recycling capabilities fit into his company's focus on sustainability. "We are grateful to the Lopes family for trusting WIN Waste to look after and grow the business in the future.”

According to WIN Waste, an estimated 50 employees will be joining the company to continue serving approximately 1,500 customers.

NER, founded in 1989, was among multiple companies run by the Lopes family, which is also involved in construction. According to NER, its facility is LEED-certified and is "one of the few" approved recycling facilities that accepts all C&D material banned from disposal by Massachusetts' Department of Environmental Protection. That list includes asphalt pavement, brick, concrete, metal, wood and clean gypsum wallboard. The NEWD site is a newer addition that picked up state and local approval in 2017, according to the Taunton Daily Gazette, and received approval for a capacity expansion in 2020.

These operations have gained further regional importance around Taunton following the abrupt closure of a local WeCare Environmental recycling facility in 2018, amid that year's commodity price declines, and the closure of a city-owned landfill operated by WM in 2020. NER was among the companies that picked up market share for recycling after that, and the NEWD site can play a role in the growing regional trend of shipping waste to out-of-state landfills. WIN owns two landfills in Ohio that have become prominent destinations for material from multiple states in the Northeast.

This deal is the latest sign of larger players gaining market share in Massachusetts, following transactions in recent years by companies such as Republic Services and Waste Connections, as well as WIN Waste. The southeastern Massachusetts market (centered around New Bedford, near the Rhode Island border) has been especially active, as seen with Waste Connections recently moving to buy ABC Disposal Service and WIN previously buying Frade's Disposal in October. Last year, WIN also acquired Noonan Waste Service and Fiore Trucking Recycle & Disposal in Massachusetts, as well as Bay State Disposal in New Hampshire.

Prior to the creation of WIN, Wheelabrator also acquired multiple notable companies — including rail-served transfer operations from United Materials Management — that helped it initially expand into hauling around Massachusetts and Maine. WIN also has a hauling presence in other parts of the Northeast through subsidiary City Carting & Recycling.

WIN Waste is regularly discussed as a possible candidate to go public, including in investment firm Stifel's latest annual trend report, and Boucher said during a March 2021 interview that "it's probably more likely than not that we would end up doing an IPO" at some point. The company was projecting an estimated $1 billion in revenue last year, prior to completing multiple acquisitions.

In addition to the previously described portfolio, WIN Waste operates several municipal waste combustion facilities, ash monofills, MRFs, transfer stations and hauling operations throughout the East Coast.

The acquisition of the Taylor County Landfill, between the cities of Columbus and Macon in Georgia, marks a new area of geographic expansion. The site's rail transfer capabilities are considered its primary strategic value at the moment, and WIN isn't expected to have near-term hauling plans for the area.

According to the most recent data from the U.S. EPA and Georgia's Environmental Protection Division, the Taylor County site isn't projected to close until at least 2064. The landfill was once described as among the largest in the state and is close enough to Atlanta that it's previously been part of industry competition for the city's disposal volumes.

GFL previously acquired the Taylor County site as part of its 2018 Waste Industries purchase. Both GFL and Waste Industries were also Macquarie investments at one time.

First developed in 1989 by Southern States Landfill, the site has changed hands numerous times. It was later owned by Allied Waste Industries, which sold it to Veolia ES Solid Waste in 2007. The landfill was then sold to Waste Industries in 2013, as part of a federally-required divestiture agreement involving the purchase of Veolia's solid waste assets by the company that became Advanced Disposal Services.

This marked the third sale of "non-core" assets by Canada-based GFL in 2021, following prior deals with Noble Environmental and LRS. The company reported aggregate proceeds of $192.8 million for those deals last year, including $66.5 million for "a divestiture of certain landfill assets" in the fourth quarter. GFL's leadership did not respond to a request for comment about what motivated this latest sale to WIN Waste. During an earnings call last week, CEO Patrick Dovigi said the company may soon sell other, unspecified non-core assets for possible proceeds of CA$60 million.