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Saubermacher expands to Balkan countries

Austria / Croatia – Austrian waste management group Saubermacher has acquired 60% of Eko-Flor Plus, Croatia’s largest privately owned waste collector.
Eko-Flor serves 3,500 municipal, commercial and industrial customers in its domestic market and in neighbouring Serbia and Macedonia. It employs 320 and has a turnover of Euro 14.1 million. Erhard Schmidt, Chief Financial Officer of Saubermacher, says the company has potential to further expand its market-leading position.

Hans Roth, group CEO, adds: ‘Croatia is an important growth market for us, bringing many opportunities. Involvement in Eko-Flor creates numerous synergies in logistics, processing, handling and recycling of waste in the Adriatic region and across our group.’


Saubermacher was expanding out of Austria well before the expansion of the EU and the opening up of eastern Europe. It is now active in collection and recycling in many CEE countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania, and has now targeted south-east Europe for its next phase of strategic expansion.


Eko-Flor was founded in 1997 by three brothers Stipe, Ilija and Josip Špikic. The company grew steadily through acquisitions and the steady expansion of its services, and made the move into collection and treatment of packaging waste in 2006 when it became involved in the Croatian Environmental Fund.

It was at this point that Eko-Flor started cleaning up landfill sites in parallel with its waste collection activity.

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