Meridian Waste Solutions Agrees to Sell Solid Waste Management Assets

Meridian Waste Solutions, Inc., an Atlanta-based technology company, announced the completion of an agreement to sell the equity interest of its wholly-owned subsidiaries that house its Solid Waste Group to Warren Equity Partners Fund II in exchange for roughly $87 million in debt assumption and $3 million in cash.

"We were able to scale and grow our solid waste unit very rapidly, but the associated debt burden and cash needs were a bottleneck in restricting our access to cost-effective sources of growth capital," said Jeff Cosman, CEO of Meridian, in a statement. "Thus, we developed a strategic plan to reduce debt and improve margins and liquidity in ways that are accretive to the company's value, thereby enabling the company to access and use more growth capital at improved rates of return. The removal of this debt and capital needs provides us the flexibility to pursue higher growth opportunities to grow at a much faster pace in our innovative technology, biomass and technology groups."

Meridian will likely now re-brand as Attis Industries, Inc., focusing more on its burgeoning technological projects and less on the solid waste collection, transfer and disposal that had historically comprised most of the business.