SK Capital acquires carbon management firm
SK Capital Partners, a New York-based private investment firm focused on the specialty materials, ingredients, and life sciences sectors, has announced that its affiliates have completed the acquisition of Milestone Environmental Services, an environmental services and carbon management company, from Amberjack Capital Partners.
SK Capital has taken a controlling stake in Milestone in partnership with President/CEO Gabriel Rio, who will continue to serve in that role and retain significant ownership in the company. Rio founded Milestone in 2014 and, alongside a strong management team and dedicated employee base, the company has become the largest independent provider of waste management services and an emerging leader in permanent carbon sequestration services to the US energy and industrial sectors.
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Milestone operates a leading integrated network of waste management infrastructure that reduces its customers’ carbon impact by permanently sequestering hydrocarbon-containing energy waste, preventing greenhouse gas emissions and water and ground contamination. Since 2014, Milestone has sequestered more than 2 million tonnes of CO2e through its proprietary slurry injection process.
In addition to expanding its leadership in existing markets, Milestone has the strategy, capabilities, and operating track record to play a major role in the rapidly growing Carbon Capture and Sequestration market, a critical component of addressing global climate change.
Leveraging its core competencies in waste sequestration, complex permitting and regulatory compliance, subsurface rights leasing, and geology analysis, Milestone’s CCS subsidiary, Milestone Carbon, is focused on enabling a broad range of industrial CO2 emitters to meet their decarbonisation goals by developing and operating injection sites that permanently and securely sequester CO2.
Milestone Carbon has several CCS projects under development and recently announced significant progress in its Midland Basin project.
Jack Norris, a Managing Director of SK Capital, stated, “We are highly impressed with the market-leading, sustainability-driven business that Gabriel and the Milestone management team have built. It is well-positioned to further grow its core business in difficult-to-abate industries as environmental regulations become more stringent and Milestone’s customers are increasingly focused on meeting ambitious decarbonisation targets. We are excited to partner with management to capture this growth opportunity as well as support its further progress towards becoming a leader in CCS and other related markets.”
Latham & Watkins LLP acted as legal counsel and Houlihan Lokey served as financial advisor to SK Capital. Committed debt financing was provided by Cerberus Business Finance, LLC. Goldman, Sachs & Company and White & Case acted as financial advisor and legal counsel, respectively, to Milestone.
