Derichebourg completes €480m acquisition of Scholz Recycling, creating European scrap giant

Derichebourg’s €480 million acquisition of Scholz Recycling creates one of Europe’s largest metal recycling groups, adding significant scale across Germany and Central Europe. The deal strengthens Derichebourg’s position in ferrous scrap supply as European steelmakers shift towards electric arc furnaces and demand for high-quality recycled metal increases.

Scrap metal recycling yard with material handler, illustrating Derichebourg’s acquisition of Scholz Recycling. — Image credit: Envato Elements

French recycling group Derichebourg has completed its acquisition of Germany’s Scholz Recycling, closing a deal first announced in May and creating one of Europe’s largest metal recycling operators.

The transaction, finalised on 31 July, sees Derichebourg Environnement take full ownership of Scholz for an enterprise value of €480 million, equivalent to 6.5 times average EBITDA over three years, including expected synergies. The figure also reflects the value of Scholz’s joint ventures, which are consolidated by equity method rather than folded directly into the headline number.

Founded in 1872, Scholz is a long-established name in European metal recycling, with 2025 turnover of €1.6 billion and more than 3,500 employees. The group sold over three million tonnes of recycled ferrous and non-ferrous metals, along with paper, cardboard and plastics, last year. Its footprint spans more than 180 sites including joint ventures, concentrated in Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, with additional joint-venture operations in Germany, Austria and Romania.

For Derichebourg, the deal delivers immediate scale in markets where it previously had little or no presence. The company says the geographic and strategic overlap is close to ideal, giving it a network of more than 100 wholly owned recycling centres, rising to 180 with joint ventures included, across territories that had been largely outside its reach.

The acquisition also positions the combined group to serve a shifting European steel industry. As steelmakers replace ageing blast furnaces with electric arc furnaces over the coming years, demand for high-quality ferrous scrap is expected to climb sharply. Derichebourg frames the Scholz deal as a direct response to that trend, strengthening its ability to supply the raw material electric arc steelmaking depends on.

The sale process itself was unusual. It followed enforcement of security over Scholz’s parent company, Chiho Environmental Group, triggering a competitive tender managed by independent receivers. Derichebourg says its bid was judged the strongest on strategic and financial grounds, and offered the greatest certainty of completion.

That certainty was tested by legal action in Hong Kong, where Chiho has challenged the validity of the receivers’ appointment and some of the steps they took. Derichebourg said it reviewed the proceedings with its advisers and concluded, as it first indicated on 8 July, that the case, to which it is not a party, did not stand in the way of completion.

With no court order or injunction blocking the transaction, the deal proceeded on the agreed contractual terms.

Financially, Derichebourg funded the purchase entirely through existing cash and confirmed credit facilities, including a bridge loan arranged by BNP Paribas. The group says its balance sheet remains solid, with post-acquisition leverage at three times EBITDA based on accounts to 31 March 2026, and expects the deal to be accretive to earnings per share in the medium term as Scholz’s operations develop and synergies are realised.

Abderaman El Aoufir, chief executive of Derichebourg, described the completion as a structuring step in the group’s international expansion strategy. He credited the balance sheet strength and industrial vision that allowed the group to move quickly on a complex opportunity, praised the resilience shown by Scholz’s teams through the process, and said the two organisations would now combine strengths to build a leading European recycling player supporting the sector’s environmental transition.

With Scholz now under its ownership, Derichebourg operates across 17 countries with a combined workforce of 8,800. Including Scholz’s contribution, the group’s pro forma turnover for 2025 stands at €5.0 billion, underlining the scale of a deal that reshapes the competitive landscape for scrap and metal recycling across Europe.

Source www.derichebourg.com