In part 1 of this Q&A series, Andusia co-founder Steve Burton reflects on how far the company has come since its humble beginning
How did the business come about?
The company was established in 2012 when the refuse-derived fuel (RDF) export market was in its infancy. We saw a gap in the market for a cost-effective solution to deal with waste that couldn’t be recycled. Rising landfill tax meant businesses were looking to divert their waste, but had limited options in the UK due to a lack of energy-from-waste (EfW) infrastructure. We realised it was far cheaper to invest in equipment to produce RDF and send it for energy recovery overseas if we could make the logistics work – and we did.
You make moving waste look easy, but is it?
That’s a good question. We quickly understood that we needed to find routes where the hauliers wanted to go. Most of our business is reliant on reverse logistics – or the empty leg, as it’s known in the industry. It costs significantly more to import product than it does to export it on the return journey so we took advantage of that. Our business model is very much focused on finding the right carrier to work with – these are often European hauliers who are delivering product near where our waste producers or offtake plants are sited, and are happy to take waste back in their trucks, which otherwise would be empty.
The company has grown rapidly in a short space of time, hasn’t it?
It really has! Our first customer was an EfW operator in Oslo, Norway, and within a year we had shipped 100,000 tonnes of RDF to the plant. From there we expanded into Gothenburg, Sweden. Most of our competitors were exporting to The Netherlands as it was relatively close to the UK, but we bypassed that to establish a foothold in other regions like Scandinavia which no other British waste exporter was serving. It’s strategy that has served our business well.
Andusia now claims to be the UK’s largest independent RDF exporter. Can you put some numbers on that?
In just over a decade, we have seen our market share increase from around 7% to over 22%; that’s a fifth of the market! Since our launch, we have exported 2 million tonnes of RDF and this year was our busiest and biggest export year ever – we supplied more than 300,000 tonnes of RDF to customers in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France and Holland. Amazingly, this growth is set to continue even further into 2024.
What’s the secret of your success?
It’s mainly down to two things – getting the logistics right and not getting distracted from what we do well. We look to focus on what gives the biggest bang for our buck – for us, that’s supplying mass burn grade RDF to plants through long-term contracts, which guarantee security of supply for EfW operators. In Europe, especially since the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, many plants are focused on energy security and are looking not just to run at capacity, but to store more feedstock. We can supply the tonnages they require.
* Stay tuned for part 2 of this Q&A, where Steve gives his thoughts on the future of the RDF market and the next phase of growth for Andusia