With growing portfolios of clean energy and environmental technology startups under their belts, Virgin Green Fund of the U.K. and Dubai's Masdar Clean Tech Fund turned to the buyout market for a major foray into the "dirty" side of cleantech. The funds announced the acquisition of established refinery services operator DuraTherm Inc. to vastly expand the market for recycling and remediation of hazardous hydrocarbon waste.
Investors are calling the deal one of the first leveraged buyouts in the cleantech sector, and Virgin and Masdar are calling on debt supplied by HSH Nordbank AG to complete the transaction as an asset purchase. Terms of the buyout and subsequent investment plans were not disclosed, but incoming CEO Kevin Trant said the newly positioned company has a major commitment from its venture-oriented equity investors to put it on a footing to expand its business model rapidly on three fronts.
DuraTherm has proprietary technology for treating sludge from oil waste recycling to render about 90% of waste capable of disposal in standard landfills, with some of the remainder going to industrial reuse and a small amount going to traditional hazardous waste disposal sites. Trant said a combination of increasing metal and oil prices, potential regulation and a market demand for environmentally friendly waste handling irrespective of cost and regulatory imperatives have created a huge opportunity for the company to increase the volume of treatment at its fixed facility in the refinery-heavy Gulf Coast region. DuraTherm will also be able to rapidly deploy new mobile technology for on-site remediation of customers' wastes.
Trant got to know DuraTherm as a service provider to Siemens Water Technology, where he was head of its services and products group, which sent sludge from its oil recycling business to the company for further remediation. He said there are several companies that offer sludge remediation, but DuraTherm's proprietary technology differentiates the company and is particularly suited for mobile applications. While familiar with the company's ongoing operations, he said he was enticed by investors to head up a venture capital-backed expansion to take advantage of new technology deployment and changing market and policy conditions.
"We can get a lot more market share here in the Gulf Coast area, but we are just beginning to get into mobile applications," Trant said. "The proprietary technology is significant, and we will build additional mobile equipment and an appropriate sales model to be determined.
"We absolutely can double revenues in the next couple of years if not triple them, and the commitments have been made by investors," he added.
The economics of the industry in the U.S. are moving toward greater demand for clean treatment technology, Trant said, but even in markets where hazardous waste disposal is essentially a nonissue, the large global oil companies are turning to environmentally friendly and resource retentive technologies. - Clifford Carlsen
See July 7 press release from DuraTherm Inc.
For more, see Earth2tech and Cleantech.com
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