Suez Environnement Profile

Company: 
Suez Environnement
Author: 
David Hall
Date published: 
2008

 

 

 

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

Revenues

€million

11092

11447

12034

n/a

n/a

Operating profit

€million

1000

1060

1061

n/a

n/a

Employees

 

72130

57446

61915

n/a

n/a

Source: Suez 2008 [1]

Suez Environnement is a French multinational company operating in water and waste management. The waste division operates under the name of Sita, both in France and abroad. In 2008 it was floated as a separate company when the main electricity and gas section of Suez merged with Gaz de France (GdF). However, Suez/GdF still owns over 35% of Suez Environnement, a dominant shareholding, and the companies have agreed to “jointly perform a process of

identification and analysis of strategical issues” , and Suez Environnement will have access to central expertise of Suez/GdF and to loan finance from Suez/GdF. The largest shareholder in Suez/GdF itself is the French government, which thus can exercise a significant degree of  influence over Suez Environnement. 

In the 1990s Suez/Sita expanded globally.  In South America for example, Sita acquired the Brazilian waste company Vega (which employed 10,262 people), and 50% of  Cliba in Argentina, with operations in other countries in South America. From 2003 it withdrew from developing countries, and also from waste management in the USA and Canada (it remains active in water in the USA). Sita now operates only in Europe, Australia, and China, and a  contract in Casablanca, Morocco, and collection contracts in United Arab Emirates.  [2]

In 2007 annual sales on waste were about €6 billion Euros. Of this €5.6 billion was in Europe – over 75% in France, Germany, and the UK – including operations in Belgium, Czech Republic,

Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and  Switzerland. 

It owns 60% of  Sita Australia, which has 800 employees and  collection contracts with 20 municipalities. In China it owns 50% of Swire-Sita, which has 1,240 employees and  €47million of business mainly in Hong Kong, where it “is one of the major players in the collection of waste, street cleaning and composting”, and it also operates a large hazardous waste incineration plant in mainland China, and a large waste-to-energy plant in Taiwan.

Suez Environnement employs nearly 62,000 people worldwide in water and waste combined. The company provides a breakdown of employees by geographical region, gender, occupational category and type of contract, but does not separate the figures sectorally between water and waste.

The company claims that “The portion of permanent contracts is very high within the Group. This demonstrates the Group’s willingness to retain employees for the long term.”, but also notes that “in Europe, several Group subsidiaries hire under fixed-term contracts before confirming most of the new employees under permanent contracts. The Group is also finding that companies active in the Waste Europe segment most often use fixed-term contracts for seasonal activities.”

Table 1.                Suez employees in environmental services (water and waste) 2006

 

2005

2006

2007

EMPLOYEES

BY REGION

 

 

 

European Union

47261

48364

52477

Rest of Europe

79

73

78

North America

3261

2553

2704

Latin America

15548

272

231

Africa-Middle East

3255

3552

3646

Asia-Oceania

2726

2632

2779

TOTAL

72130

57446

61915

 

 

 

 

CATEGORY

 

 

 

Managers

6783

7091

7766

Technicians, Supervisors

11835

10406

11365

Workers, employees, technicians

53512

39949

42784

TOTAL

72130

57446

61915

 

 

 

 

WOMEN

 

 

 

Percentage of women employees

18.5%

18.0%

18.3%

Percentage of women in management

21.4%

22.7%

23.9%

 

 

 

 

TYPE OF CONTRACT

 

 

 

Indefinite

94.5%

92.9%

92.1%

Other

5.5%

7.1%

7.9%

  • [1] Suez Environnement: Prospectus 2008
  • [2] Suez Environnement: Prospectus 2008