| Sustainability, Team Reconomy, Technology

Reconomy’s HY 2024 Business Update – Excellent strategic progress as the business continues on its fast growth trajectory

Reconomy, the leading international circular economy specialist, is pleased to provide an update on an excellent period of progress for the Group in the first half of this year.

Guy Wakeley, Chief Executive at Reconomy, stated: “While there is growing international recognition of the need to transition to a circular economy, global circularity is still in decline and the global economy remains predominantly linear. At this current rate we will continue to deplete resources, damage environments, fail to reduce emissions from waste and lose out on economic growth. This decline is despite consumption continuing to accelerate, and by 2050 the world is expected to produce 3.4 billion tonnes of solid waste annually – a 70% increase from 2018.

“As a result, it is vital that businesses take steps to shift towards circularity. At Reconomy, we are united by our vision to create a waste free world and help our customers develop fully circular solutions to harness the inherent value of their resources. I am delighted by our excellent strategic progress in the period as we continue to build out a world-class, tech-enabled, people-powered platform to serve our customers and deliver strong growth. We remain very confident about our long-term prospects and are perfectly positioned to take advantage of the significant opportunities ahead of us in the international circular economy.”

Acquisitions

  • Reconomy completed four acquisitions, including its first two acquisitions in North America, building on five highly complementary acquisitions in 2023.
  • The US: Reconomy acquired Lincoln Waste Solutions, a leading US-based waste and recycling management and consulting firm and Vermilion, the US market leader in the take-back of pharmaceutical products.
  • Strategic rationale: Expanding into the US market provides an important platform to accelerate growth in North America and widens the Company’s international footprint. It further builds on Reconomy’s existing presence in North America through RLG, part of its Comply Loop, already supporting many customers as they prepare for EPR and operating household recycling collection schemes.
  • Other acquisitions: Reconomy also acquired German-based metal recovery experts Sudamin Rohstoff, and Circle Waste, a digital-first, UK outsourced waste management provider, strengthening Reconomy’s position in the UK and European markets.
  • These acquisitions are complementary to, and made possible by, Reconomy’s strong organic growth across its core geographic markets and sector verticals.

Investment in cloud technology and AI

  • Investment in tech: Reconomy continued to invest heavily into strengthening its cloud technology, digital and AI capabilities to drive efficiencies and scalability, underpin new offerings and deliver cutting-edge data-driven solutions to its customers.
  • Digitisation programmes: Over the next two years the business intends to invest more than £30m across various digitisation programmes.
  • RecoTek: A new technology hub and scaling centre, in Romania, launched in February and is already delivering significant benefits for all business units. The hub will help Reconomy accelerate product development and drive continuous improvement across its platforms and services.

Senior hires to bolster leadership team and ramp up growth

  • The Company made a number of senior hires and internal promotions to bolster its leadership team at a Group level and across a number of its brands. These include:
    • Diane Crowe as Group Sustainability Director;
    • Paul Horrocks as Group Finance Director;
    • Two senior hires to its ReBound brand in the US: Rich Pirrotta as Executive Vice President and Jim Kapper as Head of Sales for the Americas;
    • Jesper Dalsgaard as CEO and Henrik Morch as Chief Operating Officer to its Combineering brand in Denmark;
    • James Skeet as Change and Transformation Director
    • Neil Simmonds as Central Functions HR Director, John Atkinson as HR Director for North America and;

Sustainability

  • A framework to enable the circular economy: Reconomy launched a framework aimed at supporting the new government to restructure the waste industry, unlock economic growth and tackle climate change. A copy of the report can be found here.
  • 2023 Sustainability Report: Reconomy reported strong progress on climate goals, which have been newly validated by SBTi and £278m was spent procuring from SMEs, which contributed to an overall total of £147m in local, social and economic value delivered. A copy of the report can be found here.

Well placed to take advantage of the significant opportunities in the global circular economy

  • Reconomy now operates across more than 80 countries, with more than 4,000 colleagues servicing over 10,000 diverse international customers. These customers include some of the world’s largest brands across multiple sectors.