Dunedin backed OSS Group has won the National ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’ Management Team of the Year award at the recent BVCA ‘Portfolio Company of the Year’ Awards in London. The BVCA awards recognise the managerial excellence shown by thriving and innovative British companies backed by private equity or venture capital.
Dunedin assisted in the creation of OSS Group in 2000 through the acquisition and merger of a number of separate waste businesses. OSS has grown to become one of Europe's leading providers of hazardous waste solutions, with a particular focus on automotive waste streams and waste lubricating oil. The company has invested substantially in technology which allows it to manufacture NexGen™ recycled fuel oil from waste oil collected throughout the UK and elsewhere in Europe. NexGen is now an environmentally acceptable alternative to virgin fuel oils and is being used by numerous customers to displace the use of virgin fuel in burners and various types of boilers.
OSS provides practical, cost effective and environmentally responsible solutions for the safe collection and recycling of waste oil and other hazardous wastes with zero landfill. The company is now seen as a leading authority in the field of hazardous waste management and the business and its reputation continues to grow. The OSS Group also has a range of environmental products. These include a revolutionary parts washer which cleans and recycles its solvent - significantly improving cleaning performance while reducing solvent usage, waste and cost.
Dougal Bennett, Director of Dunedin said: “OSS has faced and overcome a number of regulatory and technological challenges which could have forced it out of business at numerous points over the last ten years. As its financial backer, we had total faith in the business and the management team; and we have continued to support the company through difficult times. Challenges have included the collapse of the global oil price, adverse changes in tax and duty affecting the whole of the UK recycled oil business, a challenging and unclear regulatory framework affecting the waste oil industry in the UK and the need to develop new and innovative technology to deal appropriately with waste oil and other automotive waste streams.
“Over the last six years, the OSS management team has worked tirelessly to bring clarity to the regulatory issues facing this industry. This has included lengthy legal challenges in order to clarify how European regulations should be applied in the UK. This ultimately led to the OSS management team working closely with Defra and the Environment Agency to establish a specification for a legally compliant recycled fuel oil which is no longer categorised as a waste and which can be widely marketed in the UK. This has established the wider principle that other wastes may also have their waste designation removed, if they are processed to agreed and acceptable standards.
“In addition to fighting and winning such regulatory battles, the OSS management team has had to overcome technological challenges as it has developed the NexGen product. It has then had to create an entirely new market from scratch in order to sell this newly developed product. Happily, sales of NexGen have now become the major revenue producer for OSS and it sells all it can make.”