The PDM Group has further strengthened its relationship with SARIA Bio-Industries, one of Europe's leading food-chain recycling businesses, as it announces SARIA has acquired a 10 per cent equity stake in the business. This investment and partnership will help to expand and accelerate the two companies' expansion plans into ReFood - a network of anaerobic (AD) plants and food collection service across the UK.
Andy Smith, chief executive of the PDM Group comments: "We're delighted to announce our close partnership with SARIA. We have worked together over the development of the ReFood brand and as their technical solutions provided to the food chain so closely replicate our own, it made perfect sense to extend the relationship to the wider PDM business."
ReFood is set to bring the latest industrial-scale AD technology to the UK and will dramatically increase the scale and scope of food waste recycling. PDM is the UK's only food waste recycler able to offer completely integrated national collections, and its network of AD plants will add to its existing portfolio of food waste solutions.
Franz-Bernhard Thier, member of the board of SARIA Bio-Industries, adds: "We're happy to be furthering our relationship with PDM. We have been growing our own European capacity for some time, having opened new AD plants in France and Germany over the last few months. We have been keen to have a position in the UK marketplace, but it is advantageous for us and PDM to work together and as a result we'll be able to invest in and develop the UK's fledgling food chain recycling infrastructure."
ReFood UK complements the SARIA's German model where four rurally-located AD plants are fed by a network of logistics centres which handle the waste from 60,000 collection points across the country. Planning permission has already been granted for the first ReFood UK AD plant, based at PDM's head office in Doncaster and construction is set to start this summer.