In the Processing business

In December 2018, the SEVADEC notified us that our subsidiary Octeva had secured the contract renewal to continue operating our Calais organic recovery facility. The contract will run from April 2019 and is worth €10.5m over five years.

I’m proud to say that this renewal takes us to an unprecedented five major public procurement contracts with the SEVADEC. The first was the construction contract for this same facility, awarded to us as Valorga International in 2003, followed by three operating contracts awarded in 2006, 2013 and now 2018, plus the construction and operating contract for the new household waste plant, awarded in July 2017.

Successive contracts like these with a single client demonstrate one of our company values, one which is very important to me: beyond the professionalism of our teams and the quality of our services, they show the ongoing trust that our customers place in us.

The Calais household waste organic recovery facility has been another of the year’s major projects. Research has continued, and some orders have been placed. It is important to understand that, because this contract involves processing household waste via methanisation of the organic fraction and producing solid recovered fuels via a process that will return to the soil a quality organic amendment created by processing household waste, the SEVADEC and Octeva have had to present a very strong case to the relevant government departments and ADEME based on the fact that biowaste has been collected selectively in the area for several years. After a few months’ delay, the operating authorisation application is now in the final stages of processing at the prefecture. We expect to receive the authorisation in February.

Lastly, we have secured the renewal for the Syndicat Tirvalis Trivalonne facility operating contract, with a value of €17.7m including optimisation work worth €2.2m. The contract began on 1 May 2018.

In the Collection and Cleansing Services business

We replied to 31 invitations to tender in 2018 and were awarded 11 contracts.

We have also secured a second renewal for cleaning services covering 16 districts of Paris, meaning that we have been selected to operate this service for the third time. In addition to its significant value (€8.9m per year), this contract is of course very positive for our corporate image.

Paris city council has also renewed our household waste collection contract for the 13^th district (€7.6m per year).

I’m not going to give you an exhaustive list of all the contracts we won in 2018, but the main ones were awarded by :

• Loire-Forez urban area in Montbrison (€2.6m per year),

• Chinon SMICTOM (€2.3m per year),

• Sables d’Olonne urban area (€2m per year),

• Ardennes Rives de Meuse combined district council (€1.4m per year),

• Aix – Marseille - Provence metropolitan area (€0.94m per year).

Our overall tender success rate is nearly one third, which is quite remarkable!

Some key statistics

In 2018, Urbaser France generated turnover of €148m and had a permanent workforce of 1050.

The Processing business accounted for exactly two thirds of this turnover, and the Collection and Cleaning Services business, one third.

In Processing, the volume of recurring business was stable overall in 2018 compared to 2017, while in Collection and Cleaning it was up 9%.

The year’s turnover was 2% higher than forecast and net income before tax 35% higher.

Création of Sertego Provence

As I explained last year, CNTY Group has set Urbaser Group an ambitious growth target, in keeping with its aim of raising turnover from €1.7bn to €3bn in five years.

In 2018, the group purchased several collection companies in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. In Spain, it acquired an industrial cleaning company, a security services company and a 20% stake in the Tirme plant in Majorca. These acquisitions boosted turnover by around €215m.

In France, we examine all the businesses that come up for sale, in accordance with the group’s growth plans. In 2018, we completed the purchase of a regional company with turnover of €6m in Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur specialising in transporting, sorting and processing industrial waste. This business, renamed Sertego Provence, is now a 100% owned subsidiary of Urbaser Environnement.

Outlook for 2019

The targets we have set for 2019 are ambitious: we aim to grow turnover by 9% compared to 2018, and increase net income by a significant margin, around 20%.

Thanks to the renewal of optimised contracts such as those for cleansing services across Paris and waste collection in the 13^th district, and the extensions to the Trivalis and Vallée de l’Yerres et des Sénarts Sivom contracts, we are well placed to achieve this objective.

We will respond to a large number of invitations to tender in 2019 across both the Processing and Collection and Cleaning Services arms of the business, and work on many of these responses is already under way. In Processing, our priorities will be tenders for Isséane and Romainville (Syctom and the metropolitan household waste agency), Varennes-Jarcy (Vallée de l’Yerres et des Sénarts Sivom), Ariane energy recovery unit (Nice Côte d’Azur metropolitan area), Trifyl, Valor 3E and Vannes Sysem.

As you have no doubt noticed, there was a constant flow of news from the company in 2018, and this will continue in 2019.