Clean Harbors Enjoys Smooth Sailing Now
Posted on: Friday, 1 July 2005, 21:00 CDT
Twenty-five years ago local businessman Alan McKim began driving around Boston in a pickup truck, offering to clean up companies' toxic waste.
Today, he's worth more than $85 million and Clean Harbors Inc., the company he founded with three partners, employs 3,800 including around 600 in the Greater Boston area.
McKim is still chairman and CEO. And Clean Harbors, based in Peabody, is riding high. It's the company that decontaminated the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 attacks and the affected buildings after the subsequent "anthrax attacks."
That work, along with the 2002 acquisition of a rival, has transformed its visibility in the industry. Today it's the biggest hazardous waste specialist in North America.
This week, five venture backers announced plans to cash in their stakes.
New York-based Cerberus and QVT, Stamford, Conn.-based Basso Holdings, Lehman Brothers' LibertyView venture funds and investment bank CSFB filed with regulators to sell $45 million worth of shares.
Profits are undisclosed but are likely to be big: Clean Harbors stock, which closed at $21.68 yesterday, has soared from just $2.50 five years ago.
Clean Harbors gets attention for the big emergency jobs it handles, such as a 2002 oil spill cleanup in the Delaware River and a 2003 cleanup on Cape Cod.
But, said William J. Geary, Clean Harbors' executive vice president, most of its business comes from prosaic long-term corporate contracts. It has 45,000 customers, from small companies to government agencies to 175 clients in the Fortune 500. Its specialist work ranges from decontamination and treatment to recycling, purifying and burying waste.
Clean Harbors operates from 100 locations in 36 states. It has landfills across the West and Midwest, from Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska to California.
It hasn't always been clear sailing. Clean Harbors' business suffered in the early 1990s when too many contractors were chasing too little business.
The company acted to build its leadership by taking over rivals. It has made 12 acquisitions since it was set up.
Source: Boston Herald
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