Germany’s leading waste management company continues to strengthen its foothold in France. Last Wednesday, Remondis finalised an agreement to purchase an 80 per cent stake in the Strasbourg-based recycling and waste management firm Schroll. The remaining 20 per cent will stay in the hands of the Schroll family, which founded the company in 1892. The parties did not disclose any information about the purchase price.
According to a Schroll statement cited by the online regional news website "Rue89Strasbourg", the transaction would allow the Alsatian company to maintain its current operations and widen its portfolio of services. All of the approximately 800 jobs at the company would be retained. The news report said that Philippe Girard, director general of Remondis France, would manage Schroll together with Pascal and Édouard Schroll and the rest of the existing management team.
Schroll’s subsidiaries include Citraval, Recybio, Sardi, Altem, Recostra, Sirmat, Neutralis and the German firm Weber Rohstoff GmbH. Schroll acquired this last company, which used to do business as Altpapier Weber, in 2011.
In 2022, the French group established the joint venture B+S Recyclage together with the German firm BT Group. Specialising in in the production of refuse-derived fuel (RDF), the joint venture has an annual production capacity of 100,000 tonnes. The offtakers for this alternative fuel include an RDF power plant operated by BT for the company Alsachimie in Chalampé in Alsace, which was commissioned in 2023.
According to a mandatory financial disclosure, Schroll generated revenues of around €82m and booked a profit of approximately €2.25m in 2023. The company specialises in collecting and sorting municipal and commercial waste and has branches in the Eastern French Alsace, Lorraine and Belfort regions. In addition to waste plastics, ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metals, waste wood and organic waste, the company also manages recovered paper and provides document destruction services.
Schroll reported having managed 997,000 tonnes of waste with a recovery rate of 91 per cent in 2024. Around 61 percentage points of the total recovery figure could be attributed to recycling and roughly 30 percentage points to energy recovery.
Remondis has been active in France for more than 20 years via its subsidiary Remondis France SAS. According to an interview that the group conducted with Philippe Girard in June 2023, its French activities generated revenues of €40m in 2022. The company reportedly collects and treats 25,000 tonnes of hazardous waste in France per year. Remondis said that its non-hazardous waste operations include a 5.5 per cent stake in the joint venture Semardel, which is active in the Essonne region south of Paris.
The German group’s subsidiaries Buchen, Remex and Remondis Electrorecycling are also active in France. The e-scrap recycler has a site in Troyes where it reportedly recovers 40,000 tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) each year.
Remondis’s sister companies Saria and Rhenus also have operations in France. Their shared parent company, Rethmann, has been a shareholder in the French local public transport group Transdev since 2019 and became its majority shareholder at the end of 2024.
Remondis was also among the parties that sought to acquire activities carved out from the French environmental services provider Suez as part of the group's acquisition by its competitor Veolia. However, the assets that were spun off to form the "New Suez" were sold to a consortium of financial investors lead by Meridiam and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).
The Rethmann group generated revenues of €22.86bn in 2023, including €12.1bn from Remondis. In 2024, the waste management company recorded full-year revenues of €13.2bn, according to "Rue89Strasbourg".
