Paprec, France’s leading waste treatment company, has announced the merger of its Swiss subsidiary Paprec Swiss Group with Metabader, a well-established Swiss specialist in scrap and metal recycling. The new entity, named Paprec Metabader, becomes the national leader in recycling in Switzerland.
Analysis by the experts at Auris Finance, advisers in mergers, acquisitions and financial engineering.
The combined business operates 31 plants and branches across Switzerland, employs around one thousand people, and expects to process 900,000 tonnes of waste per year by the end of 2026. Revenue for the new structure is projected at approximately CHF 350 million, or close to €380 million.
Paprec remains the majority shareholder of Paprec Metabader. Two Swiss infrastructure funds, Clean Energy Infrastructure Switzerland 3 KmGK, managed by Swiss Life Asset Managers and UBS, and Reichmuth Infrastruktur Schweiz KmGK, remain shareholders alongside the French group.
A Swiss presence built step by step over fifteen years
The merger is the latest step in a development path Paprec has pursued in Switzerland for more than fifteen years, first in the German-speaking region with brands such as Lottner, Lopatex and Reisswolf, followed more recently by an acceleration in the French-speaking region. The group notably strengthened its position there in 2024 with the acquisition of Helvetia Environnement, after which Paprec Swiss Group employed close to 700 people across some twenty sites.
Metabader, for its part, is a family business founded in the 1940s in Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, in the canton of Vaud. It runs eleven sites located mainly in western Switzerland, employs more than 200 people and generates annual revenue of around CHF 100 million. The company brings the new group recognised expertise in the transport, recycling and recovery of scrap and metals, a segment Paprec had developed less extensively in Switzerland until now.
A governance structure that closely involves the Bader family
Jessy Bader, one of the siblings who led Metabader, becomes a partner and Managing Director of the French-speaking arm of Paprec Metabader. He says he is delighted and proud of the tie-up, which he describes as the coming together of two families that share the same environmental convictions and the same commitment to customer service. Jack Bader will continue to support the new group in order to ensure a smooth transition.
This combination of expertise, together with a tighter territorial network, should enable the group to offer tailor-made recycling and waste recovery services to its industrial clients and to local authorities.
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The transaction is part of a broader momentum for Paprec, which continues to expand internationally. The French group posted revenue of €3.5 billion in 2025 and is targeting the €4 billion mark in 2026, with the ambition of generating a quarter of its sales outside France as early as this year. The merger with Metabader illustrates this country-by-country external growth strategy, in which consolidating local players makes it possible to build leadership positions in markets considered strategic.
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