Windfall for owners of waste firm

THE owners of a medical waste disposal company are in line for multi-million euro windfalls after selling up for around €110 million.

Dublin-based Sterile Technologies Group has agreed a cash and debt takeover offer from the Nasdaq-listed American company Stericycle.

Sterile Technologies is one of the biggest players in the medical waste disposal industry, with operations in Ireland and Britain.

Stericycle will spend €95m in cash up front for the Irish firm, with the remaining €14.3m being the assumption of Sterile Technologies debt mountain.

The biggest beneficiaries of the sale will be the well-known financier Paul Coulson and the Rogers family, who set up the company a decade ago.

Mr Coulson, the chairman of the Ardagh glass company, through his Luxembourg-based investment vehicle Yeoman International, owns 45% of Sterile Technologies and will net just under €43m from the takeover.

A similar figures will be received by Desmond Rogers and his family.

Mr Rogers, a 53-year-old Meath-based businessman, founded the company in 1996. He is active in the household and commercial waste industry and has built up the company over the years through acquisitions and expanding outside of the Republic.

Mr Coulson and the Yeoman group came on board as shareholders in 1999. The remaining shares are held by a group of senior executives.

One of the prize assets of Sterile Technologies is its 10-year contract with the Department of Health to dispose of all medical waste from the country's hospitals, which it won in 2003. It also has a similar arrangement in Northern Ireland.

According to the last set of accounts filed by Sterile Technologies at the Companies Registration Office, which cover until the end of 2004, the company had revenues of €34.6m and pre-tax profits of just over €1.6m.

Revenues are thought to have increased to around €37m in 2005, though it is not known if profits have also risen.

In a note to those accounts, chief executive Niall Wall said that following the takeover of Eurocare Environmental Services in 2004, the company was the "market leader in the clinical/healthcare waste processing market in Britain and Ireland."

The company employs more than 300 people. No reduction in the workforce is expected following the takeover.

Based in Illinois, Stericycle is one of the world's largest medical waste management firms with businesses in the US and Europe and 330,000 customers.

In 2005, the company had sales of €510m and net profits of €57m. It said the deal would add it its earnings immediately.