ISSUE 27 November/December 2008
www.insidewaste.com.au
A 14
New IS ass WA te em am •C onfe bled plan r s fo ence •C r omm 2 unic 009 opi ati pag nions ng es 9 –12 •
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Publication
Commodity price crash: where’s metal headed? Back from the brink, a landfill site resurrected The ‘buddy system’ for well skilled workers Product Profile: Compost turners
The Official Publication of the Waste Management Association of Australia
Landfill owners break ranks
PP: 255003/07055
The Australian Landfill Owners Association (ALOA) has been formed to advocate that sector’s views to government. Aiming to pull in any private operator or council with a facility taking more than 50,000 tonnes of any waste annually, its formation comes in response to frustration the Waste Management Association’s ‘broad church’ has not enabled landfillers to adequately push their concerns, especially over emissions trading. Founding members are Thiess, Transpacific Industries, WSN, Boral, Hanson, Brisbane City Council and Veolia. SITA refused an invitation to be at the first meeting, but it and any other large landfill owner are still invited to join. “We need an association that is focused only on landfills and is not distracted by other issues,” says Veolia’s Max Spedding, who is also the current head of WMAA’s landfill division, which he argues will still have a role. “While WMAA is a great vehicle for developing research and best practice, it’s not a great vehicle for lobbying”. Thiess’ Colin Sweet chaired the inaugural ALOA meeting in late November. At print time it was early days in terms of the group’s structure, but with Continued page 3
WSN carve off sparks salivation NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal has confirmed the cashstrapped state plans to “unlock capital” by selling waste arm WSN Environmental Solutions, although it will be “business as usual” while a review is undertaken “to consider the optimal transaction strategy”. Implications of the Commonwealth Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme are among the issues being considered. Suitors are already circling the company’s 11 Sydney waste sites and one MRF at Moruya on the south coast. A total value of $250-300 million has been touted, although many are hoping WSN will be broken up to encourage greater market competition. Division into perhaps three geographical regions is one possibility, but there are strong calls for the government to open the process to public tender to determine exactly how it is sold.
Commodity price crash Falling commodity prices are hurting recyclers and the clients who have risk-sharing agreements in place with them, especially in scrap metal and plastics. “It’s certainly knocked us about a fair bit,” says Aaron Lee from the nation’s biggest council, Brisbane City Council, which has risk sharing arrangements in place with Visy. Lee says hedging arrangements will partly shelter it until the new year, but then “it probably equates to a couple of million dollars a year we’re going to lose”. A lot of pain is also being felt by collection companies locked into contracts with generators, with those unable to activate contract variation clauses unlikely to be so generous with their tenders when contracts are renegotiated. But the worst hit is obviously the MRF operators left holding the can as demand for material dries up. For more on the commodity price crisis, see page 14.
Transpacific Industries’ head Terry Peabody told Inside Waste “we will be a very interested buyer”. Despite its current debt levels causing the TPI shareprice to tank, Peabody is “quite confident” it could raise the equity. But TPI and French multi-nationals won’t be the only bidders at an auction. “We’re very interested in the sale, particularly in the sale of the recycling business,” says Visy’s Lee Smith, who claims recycling operations have been part of a “package deal” for WSN and not something it “really focused on”. Smith says WSN also has attractive real estate assets and, “whatever form the sale comes in, we’re interested”. “We don’t really want to be in the waste [disposal] business,” but if it is an all or nothing deal, “we’d look around for other parties interested in being involved in some sort of joint venture”.
Inside Image
The “dump chook” silhouette is a familiar sight at the nation’s landfills, although Bundaberg Regional Council has found a way to eliminate them – see page 18 for full story.
