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IRELAND’S WASTE MARKET is about to lose a major player as Panda has been cleared to take over the waste-collection business of rival Greenstar.
Panda had been hoping to add Greenstar’s 80,000 residential customers to its own 150,000. The two companies are among the largest players in the Irish waste collection market.
Ireland’s competition watchdog, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), previously announced after conducting a preliminary review into the proposed deal that it would launch a full phase-two investigation.
Such a move is quite rare, and is something that the CCPC has only done about two dozen times since 2003. However the CCPC today said that it has decided to clear the deal, subject to certain conditions.
In a statement the body said that to prevent a “substantial lessening” of competition following the proposed deal, “the legally binding commitments require PandaGreen to sell Greenstar’s domestic waste collection businesses in Fingal and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown”.
Concerns
It said it started its investigation in February and identified some concerns, specifically a “substantial lessening” of competition for domestic customers in the two local authority areas.
The commission said that Panda gave binding commitments to sell Greenstar’s domestic waste collection businesses in both Fingal and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown to a purchaser approved by the CCPC.
This purchaser has been identified as Greyhound, one of the other few large players in the Dublin residential waste market. The CCPC said that Panda has signed non-binding terms of agreement with Greyhound for the sale.
“If the sale to Greyhound does not proceed, the commitments require that the two identified businesses be sold to an alternative purchaser or purchasers to be approved by the CCPC,” it said.
The deal does not include Greenstar’s landfill power-generation business.
Choice
CCPC chairwoman Isolde Goggin said that Panda’s commitment to sell Greenstar’s domestic waste collection businesses in Fingal and Dun Laoghaire ”means that consumers in those areas will continue to have the same amount of choice as they did prior to the merger”.
“Panda has confirmed to the CCPC that consumers in Fingal and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown who are transferred to the new provider will receive the same domestic waste collection service from the new provider on precisely the same terms and conditions – including price – for the remainder of the term of their contracts,” she said.
Panda is estimated to have annual revenues of about €80 million and employ about 70 people. As well as its large residential base, it serves about 15,000 business customers and has operations in Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow.
Greenstar, which was bought out of receivership by US investment giant Cerberus in 2014, is estimated to have turnover of about €100 million. As well as its residential operations it has a large commercial arm, employs about 850 people and is active in 11 counties across the country.
Written by Paul O’Donoghue and posted on Fora.ie
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Split the €5.4m and give them 9k each. That would get them through a decent college course instead of whatever poxy fas type scheme they’re proposing
train them for what?? where are the jobs?? will end sending most money back same happened when Dell culled their workforce most money unused.
Am I missing something?
Retrain for what?
how to speak a different language when they have to immigrate
Damn you evil Europe. How dare you fund the retraining of our unemployed?!? Patently a scheme related in some way to bond holders
As for Sinn Fein welcoming it….there should be an An Phoblacht version of the Collins dictionary produced. Their definition of irony would be interesting.
Speaking of call centres I see there are 3 people on the Sinn Fein Journal monitoring post tonight…
Go to bed and stop worrying about SF.
The journal is covered in Sinners and lefties.
Going on these pricey gimmicky training courses is a waste of time right now…i have to go on them all the time with work…courses for motivation..teamleader..problem solving..lean..technical report writing…i have a folder full of lovely certs…all a heap of crap…divide the cash up and hand out to the ex employees…it puts much needed cash into the local economy…job done.
Now we know why you’re only worth two cents
Pathetic Paul…The term ‘My Two Cents’ refers to the analogy of I have an idea that I’ll throw in for discussion…
Ahhhhh, that’s what it means. You know, I would have never figured that one out. Thanks for clearing it up.
Your ‘no sense’ approach to developing yourself still makes you only worth two cents. Surprise you still have a job with that attitude.
invest the money in job creation, no point in being highly trained and being bone idle.
I love them words invest in ‘Job Creation’ no point lads…no one is spending!!
Basically it works like this.
A talk talk workers gets on some over priced course.
Waste of money.
I think ‘retrain’ are for those with no degrees or decent education. I think a lot of people were working there for years and that’s all they know and were trained for in life.
Shame in them. No excuse for laziness and lack of ambition.
Why I does every comment on here have to be so negative? I’d love to hear from some of the people affected and what they think.
There has hardly been a job announcement in this city since it closed over a year ago and that’s not an exaggeration. Where are these jobs going to come from.
I do see that cork is to get a new European head quarters for some US company and 30 more jobs being created in Galway.
What are they going to do train them to leave Waterford. No point in training people if there are no jobs for them. We were promised all the help we needed when talk talk closed but as seen from this article we most certainly are not getting it with an unemployment rate 4% higher then the national average.
Also the generalisation. Of the talk talk workers not being educated is disgraceful I happen to know plenty of people who worked there who had third level education unfortunately there was no work in the areas they had studied.
Whether someone goes to college or not shouldn’t matter. Some jobs do not require you to have a degree and a lot of companies offer great training programmes to their employees.
As one of the ex-TalkTalk workers, its incredible to see how many negative and pessimistic comments there are on here from the Irish public.
it’s good to talk talk
Great to see that the Irish public are as pessimistic as ever. This funding scheme has already been of great help to myself and many of my former colleagues at TalkTalk. It provides funding for both education and enterprise, in an area of the country which has suffered more from job losses and unemployment than anywhere else in the country. Some people that have commented here (Paul Lanigan in particular) would want to grow up.
That should pay for a few Safe Pass courses…
As an ex-Talk Talk worker, I’m making good use of the funding and so are a lot of other people I know. And no, it’s not on useless overpriced courses. Most of us have the cop on to use this opportunity for valuable and relevant training. It is OUR own lives after all so why wouldn’t we make the most we can of it?
I got my degree while working at Talk Talk by the way so I wouldn’t say I’m lazy or unambitious – I am so surprised at people’s reaction to this news.
As another former Talk Talk employee, I agree that some of the comments here beyond stupid, seriously people.
There should be more money spent in Waterford, helping to create jobs, get people back to work, bringing new businesses, retraining local workers and help people set up there own businesses. Education and Innovation are proven to be two of the biggest factors in getting an economy back on track and there has been very little investment in Waterford aimed at job creation in comparison to the rest of the country, its an absolute disgrace. Waterford is becoming a black hole for unemployment and if the Government don’t sort something out now will become a very costly exercise into the future.
have your say