Dive Brief:
- GFL Environmental announced the acquisition of Dallas-based Frontier Waste Solutions on Wednesday. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Frontier has nearly 1,000 employees and 665 vehicles across 24 locations in the state. The company, which provides commercial, residential and industrial hauling services, also comes with a C&D landfill and other assets.
- Frontier CEO John Gustafson and others invested approximately $100 million of transaction proceeds into GFL. “We are excited that John and Frontier's other senior management will continue to lead the business going forward as both employees and shareholders of GFL,” said CEO Patrick Dovigi in a statement.
Dive Insight:
This transaction is one of GFL’s larger deals in recent years, following a period of focusing more on tuck-ins and mid-sized transactions. It notably densifies the company’s position in Texas, which previously included about a dozen hauling locations and three landfills.
Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the transaction, estimated the deal was worth about $900 million. GFL declined to comment.
Brown Gibbons Lang & Co. was lead transaction advisor, along with Alvarez & Marsal as financial advisor and A&O Shearman as lead counsel for the sellers.
Frontier launched in 2017 via the acquisition of two smaller haulers. Initial backers included Gustafson, Blue Sage Capital and Trailcreek Capital Group. The company continued to expand via at least five more deals in the following years, including select assets from Waste Connections. It also notched multiple municipal hauling contract awards.
In 2022, Summer Street Capital Partners and Concentric Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in the business. Both firms have a track record in the waste industry, including the 2023 sale of Florida-based Coastal Waste & Recycling to a Macquarie Asset Management fund.
"Our partnership with Concentric and Summer Street was critical to Frontier’s continued growth and
success,” said Gustafson in a statement. “Having collaborative partners with robust industry expertise and a network developed over 20 years provided the support necessary to achieve our ambitious growth plans while maintaining an unwavering focus on exceptional customer service.”
Frontier grew through acquisitions, including the 2023 purchase of Absolute Waste Services which was its 17th deal. Frontier bought its first disposal site in 2024, the recently opened 380 McKinney C&D Landfill, in conjunction with a new municipal contract in the area. Gustafson told Waste Dive at the time that Frontier was servicing an estimated 350,000 customers in Texas. The company continued to pick up municipal contracts during 2024 and 2025, as well as complete other small acquisitions. Today, it services more than 460,000 customers.
Frontier’s service areas include major markets such as Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and other locations. These both complement and expand GFL’s existing Texas footprint. The bulk of GFL’s presence in the state comes from the 2020 purchase of WCA Waste and the 2022 purchase of Sprint Waste Services.
The Texas market remains attractive for haulers and has seen plenty of deal activity in recent years. In a statement, Dovigi described the Texas Triangle area as “one of the fastest growing regions” in the country.
GFL shifted away from larger deals in recent years, as it focused on reducing its debt leverage and optimizing its footprint through select divestitures and the spinoff of its environmental services business. The company has remained steady with tuck-in deals and ramped up its overall M&A spending last year to more than 1 billion Canadian dollars, including the purchase of Superior Waste Industries in Oklahoma. During the company’s most recent earnings call, executives projected they could spend up to 2 billion Canadian dollars on M&A this year.
The company reported completing seven other tuck-in deals this year, including in Michigan. It estimated those deals, combined with Frontier, were worth up to 450 million Canadian dollars in annualized revenue.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional information and comments about the transaction.
