COMPANY PROFILE
Money to burn
IF waste exporter Andusia had an office mantelpiece on which to show off its accomplishments, there’s every chance it would be buckling under the weight of its considerable success.
In a few whirlwind years, the Hertfordshire- based business has nailed one
impressive achievement after another, consistently spiralling upwards from a standing start to become the UK’s largest independent exporter of RDF to Europe.
Taking pride of place on that mantelpiece would probably be the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, awarded in 2016 in recognition of a whopping 545% sales growth in the three years from launch – and the first time the award had been presented to a business of its kind.
A more recent milestone achievement was the landmark moment when Andusia, seven years old last month, celebrated collecting and exporting its one millionth tonne of RDF.
To put that into context, as last year shuffled to a close, the business calculated it had exported enough bales to stretch from London to Rome.
Even better, each of those bales was being diverted from landfill to be put to good use creating heat and power for energy hungry waste plants in Europe.
40 SHWM March, 2019
By SANDRA DICK It is, it appears, a classic win-win situation.
An alternative to landfill “I don’t think we foresaw anything like this at the start,” admits Steve Burton, who founded the waste export business with fellow director Stewart Brackenbury, in 2012. The business was conceived almost by chance after they spotted a gap between demand from European (particularly Scandinavian) waste-to- energy incineration plants and the rising domestic need for an alternative to landfill for its waste.
“Of course, we wanted something that would be as big as this,” said Steve. “But I don’t think it was really on our minds that the business
would be this successful.”
Yet what started as a hopeful venture - establishing links with producers of waste bound for landfill, finding recycling businesses to take on the task of sorting and baling it, and then exporting it for use in European combined heat and power (CHP) plants - has quickly evolved into a major success story.
In its first year, Andusia exported 13,000 tonnes of RDF. In more recent years the output of its client base at home and abroad has ballooned to well over 300,000 tonnes per year. A third of it goes to Norway and Sweden while most of the rest goes to Germany and the Netherlands.
With RDF exports going strong, the business soon branched into solid recovered fuel (SRF) waste. Last October, Andusia ticked another box when it exported its first consignment of SRF waste to a Mediterranean plant.
Andusia founder, Steve Burton
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