FCC has acquired the Hernández Cerrajero-Marepa Group, which is in the business of recycling (recovering, classifying and treating) used paper and cardboard from both industry in general and sorted home pickup. The investment cost a total of 50.1 million euros.

With this acquisition, the FCC Group has entered the paper treatment field and fully rounded out the activities of its Industrial Waste Treatment Division, whose revenues will come to 145 million euros a year.

Hernández Cerrajero-Marepa treats over 300,000 metric tons of waste a year, making it one of Spain's biggest waste managers, with an estimated turnover of 32 million euros for the upcoming fiscal year.

The group comprises six companies:

• Manipulación y Recuperación, S.A.
• Papeles Hernández e hijos, S.A.
• Industrias Sangar, S.A.
• Papeles Vela, S.A.
• Recuperaciones Madrileñas del Papel, S.A.
• Recuperaciones Madrileñas del Papel, S.A.

It has two treatment plants in Madrid and one each in Barcelona, Toledo, Valladolid, Ávila, Cáceres and Asturias.

This new business will be assigned to Ámbito, the brand name for innocuous and hazardous industrial waste management in the FCC Group, and Ámbito will as a result hold an even stronger position in its sector.

There are currently 29 companies in Ámbito, which in Spain manage eight industrial waste dumps, 14 transfer centres, 15 treatment plants and three bases for industrial cleaning lorries.

During 2004 they managed 910,000 metric tons of waste and treated over 420,000 m3 of contaminated soil.

FCC has also started to expand internationally in this business. In June last, the Portuguese government awarded FCC the first Portuguese licence to install and operate an integrated centre for the recovery (including energy recovery) and elimination of hazardous waste.

This facility is located in the municipality of Chamusca, in the Ribatejo district of Portugal, about 80 kilometres east of Lisbon. It will have a useful lifetime of about 25 years, and its total turnover will come to about 200 million euros.

It is the first industrial waste treatment plant to be built in Portugal, and it will help solve the problem of the right treatment to apply to the hazardous industrial waste the country produces.