Company sets down more safety and sustainability markers including fuel recycling
Waste management firm and major fleet owner Toxfree had a major rise in revenue but only a slight boost to profits, in a financial year punctuated by acquisitions and other developments.
Revenue rose 26 per cent to $496 million, nearly double 2013’s $285 million and profits were up 2 per cent to $13 million.
Highlights included Toxfree’s entry into the health sector through the acquisition of DanielsHealth Australia, growth in the company’s east coast business driven by momentum in infrastructure development and implementation of new waste treatment technologies to further improve business performance,” Toxfree MD Steve Gostlow says.
The Daniels purchase cost $192 million while that of JJ Richards’ industrial business in Roma was $8.7 million and Active Industrial Solutions cost it $6.4 million.
Toxfree Fuel
Net capital investment in plant and equipment was up $4 million to $36 million, which included the completion of automated container de-packaging unit HazPack, electronic waste recycling plant BluBox, the Toxfree Fuel project in NSW and the upgrade of the Daniels Silverwater facility.
Following the acquisition of Daniels Health, Toxfree implemented a program to replace the natural gas being used as a fuel in the medical waste incinerator in NSW and replace it with an alternative recycled fuel source
“Sustainability is integral to the way in which Toxfree operates and we continue to dedicate resources to finding new ways to minimise our environmental footprint,” Gostlow and chairman Robert McKinnon say in the company’s annual report.
“One such initiative, of which we are immensely proud, is the development of Toxfree Fuel which is produced by transforming liquid waste products into fuel.
“We consider ourselves to be pioneers in this space and we look forward to making further progress in the coming years.”
With Toxfree Fuel, the company uses various liquid waste products into fuel for industrial applications.
Waste fuel blends are utilised at Toxfree’s Silverwater incinerator to offset natural gas usage and 200,000 litres of Toxfree Fuel has been supplied so far.
Using HazPak units the firm crushes and consolidates materials such as steel and paint from used paint tins and oil filters. The liquids are recovered and blended to create a fuel and the solids recovered and recycled.
Work will begin on the upgrade of the Victorian incinerator at Laverton this financial year “to enable additional Toxfree Fuel synergies to be realised”.
“Further applications for Toxfree Fuel are in various stages of development,” the company says.
Safety
On the fleet front, the coming financial year is expected to see implementation of time and attendance, optical scanning software and in-vehicle monitoring systems.
The company says it has three corners to its safety approach:
- investment in safer and more productive fleet to improve engineered safety
- a Right to Drive policy which focuses on “ensuring aligned driver behaviours and education and reporting to ensure at-risk behaviours are detected, addressed and remedied”
- traffic management and exclusion zones.
Vehicle expenses rose $5 million to $25.1 million while labour costs were up a tad more than $40 million to $166 million.
The year saw Toxfree engage in the Stop. Look. Wave. classroom safety program to more primary schools around Australia project in partnership with Volvo Australia.