Van Gansewinkel Groep is internationally oriented and outside the Benelux also has
branches in France, Germany, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.
However, in countries where Van Gansewinkel Groep does not have branches of its own, customers are also offered assistance with waste services on location, organisation and implementation of international take back systems and the related reclamation of raw materials.
France
In France, Van Gansewinkel Groep has collection and recycling operations.
As a challenger in the French market, what sets Van Gansewinkel apart is its vision of ‘Wasteno more’ (Le déchet n’existe pas). The collection business has approximately 65 employees and has two branches in the Lille region. The company intends to grow rapidly during the coming years, both organically and through acquisitions. With three branches and a volume of 370,000 tons of waste, Maltha Glasrecycling is an important operator, particularly in the south of France.
The focus in recent years has explicitly been on improving quality. Coolrec has modern processing lines for cooling and freezing appliances in northern France.
In partnership with Envie 2e Nord, the business also takes in all other flows of discarded electrical and electronic appliances for dismantling and depollution.
Envie 2e Nord is a subsidiary of Vitamine T, a company specialising in reintegrating workers into the labour process.
Hungary
In the autumn of 2008, Maltha acquired Hungarian glass recycling business Humán Szerviz, giving Van Gansewinkel Groep a foothold in Hungary. From its base in Hungary, Maltha intends to sell increasing volumes of glass fragments to glass manufacturers in Central and Eastern Europe.
Portugal
Maltha has had operations in Portugal for over fifteen years. Its location at the centre of the country yields around 175,000 tons of clean glass fragments every year to serve as raw materials for the glass industry. The plant has been significantly modernised in recent years, and its capacity substantially expanded. Maltha Portugal fulfils an explicit need on the Iberian Peninsula.
Poland
Van Gansewinkel collects household and industrial waste in Poland. In 2010, with a workforce of 262 employees, it collected a total of approximately 100,000 tons of waste. In Poland, Van Gansewinkel offers an increasing customer base a coherent solution to their waste problems and sees it as a challenge to give as much waste as possible a second life in the form of raw materials. Van Gansewinkel has been active in the Polish market since 1998, particularly in the southern part of the country. Besides its head office in Kraków, the Polish business has branches in Olawa, Ruda Slaska, Legnica, Polkowice and Tarnów. Over the past decade, Van Gansewinkel’s operations in Poland have grown by approximately 20% per year.
Czech Republic
Van Gansewinkel Groep has had activities in the Czech Republic since the
mid-1990s, operating as a waste service provider and a supplier of raw materials.
It currently has 318 employees working at five locations. The company collects household and industrial waste, and separates paper, glass, plastics and drink containers. These flows are processed to create new raw materials.
Van Gansewinkel also offers services in the area of water purification, public lighting and urban cleaning in the Czech Republic. The company collects the waste of more than 2,500 businesses and several tens of thousands of households.
Van Gansewinkel Groep also provides the logistics services for the Czech light bulb return system and other collective return systems.
In the Czech Republic, Van Gansewinkel Groep has a majority shareholding in Petka CZ, a business that every year processes more than 4,000 tons of PET bottles (containers for soft drinks and other liquids) into so-called PET flakes. This raw material is supplied to the thread industry, manufacturers of PET binding tape, PET foil for the production of foodstuff packaging and other applications. Petka CZ exports approximately 30% of its output to Germany and the Netherlands. The Czech Republic incinerates only 10% of its waste. The very low incineration capacity means that large quantities of waste still have to be taken to landfills. Van Gansewinkel Groep intends to continue investing in recycling facilities in the Czech Republic,
and its ambition for the longer term is to invest in energy-from-waste plants.
Germany
Since 2009, Coolrec has also had a branch in Germany. Coolrec Deutschland GMBH specialises in refined separation technology, and extracts iron, aluminium, copper and other substances from bottom ashes released during the energy from waste process. Other Coolrec products are also shipped to Germany for additional treatment.