Waste treatment provider AVANTech, of Columbia, S.C., has acquired Mid Columbia Engineering (MCE), a Richland, Wash., firm that has done work at the nearby Hanford Site. The companies did not release the sale price for the buyout.
AVANTech plans to continue to expand its newly acquired Richland manufacturing and service facility, which will help deliver products and services to Hanford and to expand the company’s West Coast business. “Furthermore, this expands AVANTech’s capacity with the DOE and provides us with key operations personnel and products needed to provide local services to the DOE sites at the Hanford reservation, Oak Ridge reservation and the Savannah River Site,” said Jim Braun, AVANTech president, in the acquisition announcement. “This helps round out our DOE offering.”
Fred Yapuncich, MCE president and CEO, now will serve as chief operating officer of the Richland facility. All employees will be retained, according to AVANTech.
The expanded company will continue to focus on wastewater treatment and recycling, cleanup, and waste packaging services. Together AVANTech and MCE, which is becoming a division of its new owner, have provided products and services to more than 175 nuclear facilities in 14 countries.
AVANTech recently received a subcontract from Washington River Protection Solutions to develop and build a mobile system for cesium removal for tank wastes at Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Plant (WTP).
Mid Columbia Engineering, founded in 1975, has provided engineering, fabrication, testing, and commercial-grade dedication services for the autosampling systems for sampling and testing high-level radioactive waste at the Waste Treatment Plant. It also has fabricated systems and components for the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion plants at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio and Paducah Site in Kentucky, along with the Waste Solidification Building at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
