LRS, the Midwest’s leading independent waste diversion, recycling and portable services provider, today announced its largest expansion to-date: the acquisitions of Orion Waste Solutions (Orion) territories in Arkansas, Kansas and Wisconsin; and Waste Recycling Solutions’ (WRS) RAMCO-Alternative Waste Management (AWM) vertically integrated waste and recycling business in the Little Rock, Ark. market. The acquisitions are effective immediately and financial terms were not disclosed.
Strategic and expansive, the vertically integrated platform acquisitions add a combined 19 municipal contracts across Arkansas, Kansas and Wisconsin; 140 new employees; 115 trucks; one C&D landfill and nine facilities. The acquisition of Orion territories includes: Central and Northwest Arkansas (Bethel Heights and Harrison, Ark.); Topeka, Kan.; and Appleton, Wisc. The acquisition of WRS’ RAMCO waste, recycling and roll-off business includes its Alternative Waste Management division and its C&D landfill located in Mayflower, Ark. All Orion and WRS employees, including the WRS leadership team and Orion Territory Leaders, will stay on to oversee the newly acquired territories.
LRS President and CEO Alan T. Handley heralded the deal that creates the largest independent waste and recycling company in the state: “This new LRS – South platform will allow expanded product offerings and cross selling opportunities throughout the entire state of Arkansas along with Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri,” Handley said. “The rapidly growing northwest Arkansasmarket has little or no recycling services and these acquisitions provide the perfect environment to graft LRS’ world class recycling offerings into this progressive market. I am thrilled to welcome the RAMCO and Orion teams to the LRS family. Under their collective leadership we look forward to explosive organic and acquisition related growth in this market.”
For WRS and RAMCO/AWS leadership, including: WRS President David Steinmetz; RAMCO CFO Rusty Janssen and AWS President Lannis Nicholson, the decision to join forces with LRS was personal, complementary, and in the best interest of not only their valued employee base, but their customers and the region. “It’s very personal to us and a lot of hard work has been built to get to where we are today. We couldn’t be more excited to join a winning organization like LRS, enabling us to expand best-in-class service offerings for our customers,” AWS’ Nicholson said.
RAMCO’s Janssen added that through the acquisition, WRS-RAMCO employees have a promising pathway for career growth as LRS expands recycling services across Arkansas and the region. “LRS is not only a recycling industry innovator and leader, but a company that treats their employees well by investing in them personally and professionally. We couldn’t be more excited to see their futures grow,” Janssen added. “For our customers, particularly our larger customers, recycling is a natural evolution and we have seen demand surge for more recycling service options; from their perspective this announcement brings a huge value-add to our relationship,” Janssen said.