A US SUBSIDIARY of Irish utility NTR is planning to build one of the country’s biggest recycling facilities in Texas.
Greenstar North America has leased a building in San Antonio, Texas, and is planning to build a recycling plant there for municipal and commercial waste.
The facility will be located in a 180,000sq ft building on a nine-acre site on the east side of the city. It will handle 20,000 tonnes a month, making it the biggest recycling centre in Texas and one of the largest in the US.
The company is handling waste from a number of cities across Texas, including San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and Houston, where the business is headquartered.
A doubling in the demand for recycling in San Antonio and general growth across the state are combining to drive the development. NTR would not reveal the amount it plans on investing in the San Antonio facility.
The move comes as NTR rebrands its Vista Fibers business in Texas as Greenstar, the banner under which it operates as North America’s biggest privately-held recycler. NTR bought Vista Fiber last October. Meanwhile, Greenstar UK is planning one of London’s biggest recycling facilities in an £18 million (€22.7 million) development in a warehouse in Edmonton in the British capital.
NTR’s Irish waste management business also operates under the Greenstar brand, but the Irish, British and US groups are separately incorporated.
NTR, which netted €800 million from the sale of its stake in wind energy group Airtricity earlier this year, is active in the US on a number of fronts.
In April, it bought a stake in the Phoenix, Arizona-based solar power developer Sterling Energy Systems (SES) for €63 million. SES has agreements to supply power to California, the US state with the biggest population. NTR subsequently appointed former Greenstar Ireland chief executive, Steve Cowman, to the same role in SES.
The following month, it merged its bio-diesel business in North America with Nasdaq-listed Green Plains Renewable Energy, and took a 40 per cent stake in that company.
NTR is a public limited company, but is not listed on any stock market, with the consequence that its shares are traded on the grey market. According to the group’s website yesterday, it was valued at a total of €1.5 billion.
