All right, welcome to the fourth and final day of Oppenheimer's 2024 Industrial Growth Conference. The fourth day, we saved the best for last doing the waste names today, and very pleased to welcome back to the conference the management team of Clean Harbors. We've got CFO Eric Dugas and SVP of IR Jim Buckley here with us. Gentlemen, thank you. We know you're on West Coast time, but we're happy to have you here with us for what I'm sure is going to be a terrific discussion, so thanks.
Great. Happy to be here now. Thanks, Noah.
Let's start with Environmental Services. Excellent start to 2024. You called out that the price-volume breakdown behind the 7% organic growth in ES was roughly split 60/40 between price and volume. So how do you see price trending going forward across the business lines within ES? Which should price in line with inflation, which above inflation?
Yeah, great, great question, Noah. Certainly, you know, pricing has been a great theme for us and others over the course of the last few years. I would start off by saying, you know, in terms of pricing, we have the exact same kind of pricing goals this year. We're pricing just as successfully. But one of the things, just as a side note, one of the things that we tried to emphasize on our call last week that we're really excited about and that we're seeing virtually across all of our business lines in ES is volume growth. And so very, very pleased kind of with volumes, you know, particularly across TS. The SK branch business continues to be a great story, and Field Services are a really strong quarter. All those business lines are about 10% year-on-year growth top line. So really excited about that.
If I switch back to pricing, as I said, I think we're still being very successful with our pricing. We're rolling out the same teams as we had the last couple of years, as I mentioned. I think the demand, again, through the volumes that we're seeing, but the overall demand that we're seeing in the industry, very, very strong. That allows us to keep pricing. And our goal, as we heard from many others earlier this week at another conference, was that we believe we can and we plan to continue to price kind of outpacing inflation and really expand margins through pricing. So again, I would say all of our business lines, we've been successful. We continue to be successful. You know, you mentioned the growth that we saw in Q1 was about 7% organically.
I would say the way that we kind of view that rolling out the rest of 2024 is consistent growth at that 7% for the full year and probably keeping that, you know, 60/40 mix in terms of pricing volume. So again, we're very bullish about 2024, seeing good signs, lots of good tailwinds, and pricing being one of them.
Starting with Technical Services and incineration, you know, incineration price was up 6% in 1Q. With Kimball coming online later this year and Gum Springs from Veolia coming online next year, you know, it's adding about 12% capacity to the market. Talk to us about your conviction level in pricing continuing to increase at that, you know, above inflation rate as new capacity comes online.
Yeah. Yeah. We're very confident that we'll be able to price above inflation, certainly in incineration. When you think about incineration, the history of incineration, pricing has never backed up. We've always seen pricing advances just because of the rare asset that those incinerators are. So we're very confident that we'll continue to see pricing. You know, is it always 7%? You know, maybe not that high, but certainly outpacing inflation. But in the near term, we certainly suspect that, you know, we'll be close to that 6%-7% price increase. We've gotten a lot of folks asking, "Hey, what do you see?
What's your outlook when more capacity comes online?" And we've for a long time been bullish that, hey, even, you know, even when our new capacity comes online and the competitor's new capacity comes online, that the demand, the backlog, the tailwinds that we're seeing from reshoring, government infrastructure monies, PFAS that I'm sure we'll get into, all those tailwinds will be able to sustain strong demand that's going to continue to keep capacity tight. And I think if you read scripts and listen to others, you know, over the last few weeks, others have shared that same thought that's provided us with even more conviction on that. So again, I think the market outlook is very strong for our industry, and we should continue to see the great growth.
So Kimball's on track, as you indicated last week, for, you know, an early 4Q open. And it sounds like we shouldn't expect much contribution for 2024. And you indicated maybe 25,000 tons for 2025. So just help us think through, what is the contribution on the 25,000 you might do next year? And when do you see Kimball achieving the run rate, which I believe you sort of pegged at around 40 million?
Yeah. So as you said, Noah, we're still on pace to open up Kimball later this year in Q4. We brought our board out there a few weeks back for some board meetings back in March. Wouldn't have done that if we didn't feel really good. So I feel really good that we're coming online. As you mentioned, this year, probably not a big contributor from an EBITDA perspective, maybe even a small drag just from some startup costs and things like that. As Eric Gerstenberg mentioned on our call, you know, next year, I think we're looking, you know, running this at, you know, 20,000-25,000 tons, which is about half capacity in 2025. You know, how are we coming up with that amount? I think we've learned a lot when we opened up the El Dorado facility back in 2017.
We did kind of have a few hiccups, maybe turning that thing on full speed a little too quickly. And so we want to be careful with that and not have those same hiccups. So really lessons learned to kind of slow that down a little bit. You know, I'm not here. I can't give full kind of 2025 guidance. But if I had to give kind of a neighborhood, you know, if you think about we've said historically, you know, this unit, EBITDA contribution when it's up and running, full tilt, kind of at today's pricing cost structure, probably a $40 million plus EBITDA figure. So in 2025, running at half capacity, you know, still working out some kinks, maybe in that $15 million-ish run rate for 2025. Again, kind of we'll see how that goes.
But, you know, full run, running this thing at full capacity, we would expect by kind of the middle of 2026, Noah.
Yeah. Well, we saw with the El Dorado ramp, and I remember it well.
Yeah.
You know, that it took some time to optimize, you know, the operations, the mix, right? I mean, you're basically MasterChefs kind of, to borrow an industry term, you know, optimizing.
Technical industry term, yes.
Yeah, yeah. So maybe help us understand a little bit more what you actually learned with El Dorado that kind of informs this view of how the ramp will proceed.
Yeah. And I'll start, and Jim, please chime in because you might have even been a little closer to it back then. But, you know, I think the biggest takeaway is, you know, when El Dorado started up, we started up very quickly. We put a lot of different types of waste through the unit very quickly. And that caused us to have to bring the unit down from time to time. Growing pains, right? New unit, break-in. You can call it whatever you'd like.
But, you know, I think with this time around, you know, we are going to kind of slow that down, maybe be more limited with the types of waste that we put through the unit at first just to break it in and really make sure we don't have kind of a heat-up, cool-down process that occurred back in 2017 with El Dorado a little bit.
And, Noah, you're pointing about, you know, we joke about having a MasterChef behind the keyboard and having the right chef's blend going in. It actually really is important because this isn't like a solid waste landfill where it's kind of just based on pounds. The mix is really critical here. And what we did in 2017, rightly or wrongly, is that these facilities can process a lot of bulk liquids and a lot of bulk solids. And that's why we're excited about the PFAS opportunity because when those big piles of contaminated soil come, we know that our plants are going to chew through that stuff.
So maybe it was a little concern about not having enough volume to go in there, but we sold down into a lot of the bulk categories, too many, as it turned out, and just started to fill the plant up with sort of lower-value waste. And so even the capacity question that Eric answered so well, I think like another thing in the background of that is that the opportunity is always there to go get that low-value stuff. We could go get liquids that go for deep well injection. We could go fill the plant up. But that's not a good strategy. Do that. And rightly or wrongly, we did that. It was the first incinerator that had come on in 20 years. And so we went and filled it up to the brim within three quarters, and a lot of stuff broke.
So I think Eric Gerstenberg, who's kind of leading the strategy for this one, is feeling like, "Let's go much slower. Let's go with the high-value content." We put in a lot of brand new direct burn streams. We put in drum aspiration to kind of handle more high-value waste right out of the gate as opposed to just stuffing it with, you know, bulk liquids and solids, which we could always do. But I think it goes to the point because we get the question from a lot of investors. You kind of are asking it here. With us and Gum Springs opening, are you going to lose pricing power? Are you going to lose your ability to have leverage? And it's really quite the opposite. The capacity is so desperately needed. And we've been kind of jokingly saying, you know, no Black Friday ever, sales ever in incineration.
So we're not going to lose pricing power. Nothing is going to go backwards. In fact, we're going to take our time filling it up to have the right mix in there.
Thanks. You mentioned the volume story. Indeed, the company did see more than price we'd expect. And that was even with, you know, landfill being down. So maybe just put into context for us the level of drum volumes you're seeing relative to history. I guess, what is driving the higher-than-expected volumes into the business, and to what extent is that sustainable going forward?
Yeah. So volumes, like I mentioned earlier, volumes is a great story with us in Q1. Drum volumes in particular, Noah. You know, if you look at kind of quarter-over-quarter, you know, we're in kind of the low single digit in volume growth. And I'll provide a couple of good examples of that. You know, one, the Safety-Kleen branch business just continues to perform very, very well. As I mentioned a moment ago, top line about 10% year-over-year. But really, what we're seeing there is a great story, you know, purely from employee retention and hiring perspective. As we're able to retain folks and hire folks in that business, we're able to get them to do more runs, more customer visits, and that's driving the amount of waste we're able to pick up.
The other really good story, and we've mentioned it a little bit, is kind of our retail business. So when you think about retail customers, oftentimes you don't think hazardous waste. But some of the more stringent compliance and rules and regulations that retailers have had to live by over the last couple of years is really causing our retail services business to grow with some very significant customers. So a lot of our drum count kind of in through those two areas. But again, I would say virtually across every kind of mix of waste from the drum side, we're seeing increased capacity coming through all of our assets. So you mentioned, you know, some of the despite increased volumes, we had lower utilization in our incinerators in Q1 than we did last year.
You know, what I would offer and remind folks is that we have over 100 sites, 100 permitted sites where we can handle different types of waste. And so it's not really just the incinerator network. Certainly, that's the crown jewels. But our TSDFs are extremely valuable. We have solvent recycling units. We have wastewater treatment plants or wastewater treatment facilities that did quite well. So really, it's all those different disposal assets in our network that are all performing at high rates and able to move more waste through the overall network. So again, volumes is a great story. And we don't see it kind of slowing down here in the early parts of Q2.
Can you talk a little bit more about how you've won business in retail and what the drivers have been?
Yeah. I think the biggest driver, Noah, is some of the incremental compliance that some of the retailers are seeing. So whether that be relative to how they may handle certain types of food waste or certain types of technologies, think about all the electronics we use. One of the neat stories that people have shared with us is if you think about the sneakers that light up that kids use that are in a lot of retailers, that is, in some locations, a hazardous waste or needs to be handled appropriately. And we can provide that to retailers. So a lot of the more stringent rules, there's been some retailers that have been fined recently over the last couple of years for inappropriate handling of waste products like these. And really, that's stuff that's now coming to us.
So again, a small piece of our business, but a rapidly growing one.
We always talk about new regulations. I know we'll probably get to PFAS at some point in the conversation here. But the enforcement of existing regulations can drive our business as well. I think that's the story in retail. As Eric mentioned, some folks have been fined under the current administration. Those rules have always been in place to not put solvents, to not put different types of waste into their trash compactors. Then when they get inspected and found to do that and they pay a fine, then they all of a sudden, you know, won't name anyone in particular, but one of the big box stores pays a big fine. Then all of a sudden, we see increased volumes from all of them.
And as Eric said, a lot more people aren't shopping in the stores, and they're doing a lot of returns. And with some of those types of products, you can't put them back out into the market because they've already been at someone's home, and they return a solvent or a degreaser or something, and they're not necessarily going to be able to resell that. So we're getting a lot of returns and waste and things. And no, all of it's incineration waste, like those light-up sneakers. We rip the lithium batteries out and then obviously send what's left of the sneaker off to a non-haz disposal. But it's brought more volumes into our network, for sure.
It's great color. It's a good reminder of how regulation does drive the business. Is there, I mean, historically, when we look at the different verticals where the company, you know, has exposure, I mean, it's been, you know, manufacturing. It's been, you know, refinery, chemicals, et cetera. Is there another obvious vertical for clear growth here, you know, similar to the retail that the company is targeting based off of some increased enforcement? Because, you know, certainly, we've seen EPA just get more broadly active under the current administration. Curious to see if that's created tailwinds anywhere else in the opportunity set. We'll talk about PFAS in a second. Let's exclude that.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, in terms of regulation, I think PFAS would be the large, the biggest opportunity there. Maybe a slightly different twist to your question if I just think about other things going on, not necessarily regulation-related with areas of growth. But I think you mentioned chemicals, manufacturing being some of our largest product lines, again, or service lines, I should say, or verticals. You know, if you think about reshoring, if you think about government infrastructure monies, those things, there's a lot of money that's going to be being poured into that. And we're meeting with some of the companies that are existing customers now that are beginning to produce more here in North America.
And so I think those are two areas, not necessarily compliance-related, right, but two growth areas that we're looking to kind of expand our already very strong position with some of those companies in those verticals. So in terms of compliance, I think PFAS is probably the biggest. But certainly, there's other tailwinds where we would look to grow strategic verticals as well.
Well, let's talk about PFAS. So just to level set, you talked about $50 million-$70 million of PFAS-related revenues last year and the pipeline growing 15%-20% each quarter. Maybe break down the mix of work you're doing currently and how you think about expectations for growth this year.
Yeah. Jim, you want to do it?
Sure. I'll start on that one. Feel free to hop in. You know, that $50 million-$70 million is an estimate. And some in the company think that's even low because we do some things where there's PFAS and other things. So it's part of a larger project. But on that $50 million-$70 million, that's probably pure PFAS-only type of work. And, you know, a breakdown, I'm not sure how accurate it would be, but or even the value it would bring, you know, because we're really talking about a whole solution there. But I'd probably say of that revenue, roughly half maybe is related to water filtration because that's really what's moved the market first. But certainly, we're doing disposal. We're doing some remediation work. We've sent some things to our landfills. We've sent some things to our incinerators.
More recently, we've added capabilities at our, you know, one of our main labs in Baltimore to do sampling of both water and soil. There's special testing and spectrometers and other equipment that you need in order to do PFAS testing. We've just gotten qualified and some certifications there. So that hasn't been part of the equation in sort of last year's revenue, but we think it will become part of it as the analytics market kind of takes off. It's part of our ability to offer a one-stop shop going forward. No, we've talked about PFAS, you and I, probably for five years.
You know, water filtration wasn't on our bingo card in the beginning, but based on a project that we did at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, which actually started as a fuel spill in late 2021, has kind of evolved into we are their key supplier for filtering that. And whether AFFF or something got in that water, that water is loaded with PFAS. And, you know, and the government's doing all the right things out there to get that cleaned up. And we've got a multi-year contract. So we've been there for 3 years. We're going to be there for probably another, you know, decade, I would guess, based on the system we have installed there. And we did such a great job that we were asked to go to other locations. So we see a path more in the water filtration spectrum than we would have originally thought.
But we're not going to try to conquer the world over the Xylems and Calgon Carbons and others. It's another tool in our toolbox. It does allow us to offer a full suite. We can filter your drinking water. We can do your, you know, contaminated pond, industrial-type waters. We can soil sample. We can water sample. We can go there. Obviously, we do remediation. We can do the hog and haul, take it all away, bring it to our landfills, bring it to our incinerators. There's really no other company that has that. Certainly, no one that has the commercial scale that we have. We're working really closely with the EPA right now because there has been that anti-incineration bias in some parts of this administration.
We want to make sure that we get everyone comfortable with what we think is the right solution, which is to destroy these forever chemicals. You really can only do that at a commercial scale in incinerators like ours.
Yeah. Not to get into the weeds here, but, you know, in reading both, you know, your own results of third-party studies and, you know, what the EPA documented and noted in its kind of preliminary disposal guidance, I mean, it seemed pretty obvious that, you know, you were getting 4-5 nines destruction on the material. So it's a little unclear to us. This is kind of a statement as much as a question. It's a little unclear what could be a more effective method of disposal. I guess, what are the prospects for that sentiment and kind of the guidance to improve just based off of the science?
Yeah. So whenever you're incinerating, there's always concerns there, these things called PICs, which is partially incinerated compounds, I believe it stands for. And so the thought was, and we deal with things that are, to be honest, more dangerous than PFAS. But for some reason, there's been this focus on this that they don't want things coming out of our smoke stack or anybody's and kind of raining down on the local community, which really doesn't happen. It's really more, you know, being naive about what our pollution controls are capable of. But we're working alongside the EPA. Their first standard is, for those that want to get all wonky, it's OTM 45. And they've established a new level at OTM 50. And the EPA has their own incinerator, I believe it's in North Carolina. So they've done their own burns, their own testing.
They want to make sure, you know, they understand what they're asking us to meet. And so we've really been partnering with them, which is how you want to do it when you're trying to meet a new regulatory or establish a new regulatory standard. So I think Eric Gerstenberg used highly, highly confident we're going to pass that OTM 50 on the last earnings call just based on where we are with the EPA.
Yeah, I would suspect so. So is that one of the key things you're or we should be watching for to catalyze further investment, you know, in some of the areas of your strength? And what else are you watching for to help catalyze investment both from, I think, our regulatory perspective and also just in terms of, you know, funding and state actions?
Yeah. I could start on that. Yeah. And I think, you know, Eric made a point when we were out in Las Vegas meeting with investors. I think it's an important one. You know, we don't have to invest anymore. We're doing the study with the EPA, but we have the plants. It's once we get the regulation, you know, we can put the soil in there and it'll eat death for breakfast all day long. So I think, you know, we just need the standard. And we've said this before in conferences that until you know how far you got to dig down or what level's acceptable, you don't put a shovel in the ground. And so I think water's moving along. They've set a standard that's, you know, not untraceable, but it's a very low standard. You essentially want it out of the water.
And that's going to move the needle for a lot of folks. That's going to get some things in line. And people are lining up to do this already because they want to get it out of the water ahead of the regulation before there's liabilities there. You know, on the soil side, it's a little bit different. It'll move at a much slower pace. It'll be a lot of finger-pointing. It'll be a lot of lawsuits. But ultimately, you know, there's been studies where when it rains, the river that's downstream from airports and military bases and firefighting schools, the PFAS levels spike. So you know, you can't just do it in the water. You have to get at the source. And that's really the holy grail for us. We're going to, you know, grow with the water market. We're going to grow with having an end-to-end solution.
But ultimately, for us, you know, the grand slam's going to be when we start digging up huge piles of this stuff or someone does and sends them to our facility.
Best estimate of when we might get an MCL for soil?
Yeah. They're saying August, but they said August last year for the water standard. And it just came out. So I'm, you know, I wouldn't hold my breath on that. And then you got the complication of an election year and possibly a change in administration. And I don't know that that's going to really, you know, divert the train off the track. But certainly, you know, there's a lot at play here. But there's also good momentum. And the fact that it's already been named in a CERCLA ruling really helps kind of set the government up to continue down the road.
Yeah. Yeah. I know there's been many different attempts to try to size the TAM of opportunity here. There was an industry peer just a few weeks ago kind of pegging PFAS remediation to be as much as a $200 billion opportunity. Of course, that was kind of across water infrastructure as well as, you know, water remediation and hazardous waste. While I'm not going to ask you for your own TAM estimate right now, I guess, how do you put this opportunity in context of other big, chunky, you know, remediation opportunities that the company has seen over the past decades?
Yeah. I mean, no, I think it's certainly one of the largest opportunities we've seen. I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. I think for us, we're in a great position to win work and provide the services. As Jim alluded to, we have the infrastructure in place to be able to handle water like we're doing now, soil. We have the incinerators. We have the landfills. We have the transportation. We have the lab work. So it's really a total PFAS solution. You know, in terms of a total TAM, I know you didn't ask the question, but you know, that guess you alluded to is probably as good as any. I think the way we're looking at the opportunity is it's a sizable opportunity. We're at the forefront.
We're doing great work with the government on some sites now and in the past that you can read about online and things. So I think if many believe the government maybe is the first mover here with some cleanup and we're in a great position for that. Our opportunity, I mean, to say, you know, revenue opportunities, if they're $50-$70 now, could they be a couple few 100 million opportunities at some time in the horizon? I don't think that's crazy. I think the only thing that we're certain on is it's a longer-term opportunity. I think the PFAS remediation is going to be long-term for decades is probably what we're measuring it in. And again, I think we're one of the leaders in the clubhouse here in terms of being able to respond in a complete, meaningful way across various different scopes of projects.
That's the communication we're trying to get across to folks. You know, as we said, the pipeline on it is growing. We just really do need kind of further clarification, you know, from EPA and others so that people know what they need to do.
Just one final point on that, Noah, because I know you've got a couple other things you want to cover. But you know, we're really working hard towards our Vision 2027. And if you think of the growth rate, the organic growth rate that's in Vision 2027, whatever PFAS is, whether we grow 15%, 10% this year, you know, 20% next year, 50% next year, whatever that number is, it's far and above what our Vision 2027 has got baked into it. And so I think it's just really good upside for anyone that's investing in our company today with an eye towards how we're going to do over the next four years.
Very helpful point. Thank you, Jim. Maybe one last question on ES before we move on. It was clear that management really excited about HEPACO. I guess, what have you seen from that business since you acquired it? And maybe walk us through, you know, the outlook for capturing the synergies you identified and, you know, really where you see the upside in the business.
Yeah. I guess first off, I'll start a month and a half or so into the acquisition. As you mentioned, Noah, very excited. I think, you know, if you think about the different screens that we put through acquisitions, certainly cultural fit is one of our screens, kind of along with strategic fit and financial fit. We passed all three of those, obviously. But culturally, the team has really come on board. Obviously, the nature of their services, emergency response and remediation, very similar to our field services. So we've been able to, from day one, kind of plug them in. The first week and a half, two weeks of ownership, they were sharing labor. They were sharing equipment. We were getting systems synced up. So very impressive from that part. And that's why we were so bullish, I think, on the call.
You know, the other thing is we've seen HEPACO continue to kind of win work here since our ownership of them. And that gives us, you know, great feelings for the future with that asset. In terms of synergies, we've said kind of full run rate synergies of $20 million on an annual basis. I think we still feel very, very good about that. Some of the biggest opportunities, you have the standard kind of rooftop consolidation and back office and things like that. But you know, what we're most excited about, I think, is HEPACO really had a nice footprint from an emergency response hotline perspective whereby they had a hotline located down in Florida where customers, even from the West Coast, even though HEPACO does not have branches out on the West Coast, customers could call the hotline.
HEPACO would hook them up with a response provider on the West Coast to do the work kind of through a subcontractor relationship. Well, we're looking forward to kind of internalizing a lot of that work with our own field services folks. And it's going to require some hiring and some retaining, but we're doing a really good job on retention and headcount management in field services. So being able to internalize that work, being able to build that work as well, build the HEPACO business line. There wasn't a whole lot of overlap between Clean Harbors work and HEPACO work, which has been really good. So we're able to fill out some different geographies. But certainly think, you know, especially given some of the success we've seen with recent acquisitions, that we'll be able to hit that synergy target and even exceed that.
So, again, feel really good, really good opportunity to increase the margins in that business, more similar to where ours are today with field services. So you know, I think you were right in reading through the excitement that management has. Just a great opportunity. And we look forward to growing that business going forward.
Terrific. In the time we have left, I want to spend a little bit of time on SKSS. You know, certainly the posted base oil prices we've seen are positive directionally. Can you maybe talk to us about market pricing trends and visibility into better spreads as we get into 2Q and 3Q?
Yeah. So you know, certainly, as you mentioned, some good movement finally recently over the last couple of weeks with some posted base oil pricing improvements. You know, I think the biggest thing for us as we continue to move out through 2024 is to be able to take advantage of that upward pricing, but also move to more contracted sales for our product. Q1 especially is a typical time of year where we need to do a lot of spot price type sales. We're going to transition that to more contracted sales here just through seasonality. But there's also a deliberate strategy that we're employing to try to get into more contracted sales and use contracted sales as a larger piece of our business. You know, you'll probably ask about Castrol here maybe.
Castrol is the agreement we entered into with Castrol is another way to try to drive more contracted sales of some of our products. As we look out the rest of the year, you know, pricing, I think we're in a different environment than we were last year. I think customers' inventory levels have evened off. We're seeing the typical kind of seasonal upward price trending.
Yeah. I mean, with Castrol, I mean, just talk to us about how the partnership came about and how, I mean, there's obviously an opportunity to leverage their marketing and distribution capabilities. What does this mean in terms of increasing contracted volumes and really driving the closed-loop initiative forward?
Yeah. I think it's a huge opportunity. In terms of, you know, how it came to be, you know, this is, we, for many, many years, as you're familiar with, Noah, we've been trying to get our product into fleet customers and things of that nature. It's really difficult, right? These big fleet customers, they rely on, they want a brand name oil in many instances. So that was a very difficult egg to crack. The Castrol agreement, we've been working with that company for a rather long time now. Leading up to the arrangement, we undertook a pilot program with Castrol that was very successful and led to the formal agreement being signed and announced. But really, this agreement, I'd say it does three things for us. One, it validates the quality of our oils.
So we've always known that our oil is high quality, just as quality as an oil through our re-refining process as would be generated from a virgin crude process. I think it also validates customers' desire to have a sustainable solution for their oil needs. And we've been espousing that. But as sustainable actions become more and more important, this is a relatively easy way for customers to kind of meet their sustainability goals. And then lastly, as you alluded to, the third thing this does to us is it gives us a partner, a well-respected brand with very good marketing muscle that can help us get our product into these fleet customers and be able to provide top-notch collection services as well. So ultimately, what are the financial implications of this? Time will tell.
Obviously, a lot of it depends upon continued success at Castrol in selling this more circular offering. But we couldn't be more excited about, you know, joining up with a major brand and really think it'll be a good thing for our business and drive even more volumes to the contract pricing I alluded to a moment ago.
Let me close with a question on M&A. You know, certainly plenty of dry powder here. You did a bigger debt raise, I think, than you needed to close HEPACO. You laid out an M&A scenario in Vision 2027. So how should investors think about the company's appetite for deals at this point and the size and shape of the pipeline?
Yeah. Well, Noah, as you know, in Clean Harbors history, you know, acquisitions has kind of been our key growth area. That's how we've grown the business over 40 years. We're going to continue to do that. It'll be the largest piece of our capital allocation. I think HEPACO, we talked about, that was a great deal kind of right in our sweet spot. Would love to continue to do deals like that, to continue to grow out kind of that ES space in particular. But we'll also look for deals on the SKSS side similar to the Noble acquisition that we're also excited about that really helped in that part of the business kind of fill in a key geography in the Southeast. But ES will be the focus. It's 85%-90% of our business. There's plenty of opportunities there. The pipeline is very strong.
We see a lot of deals. We turn down a lot of deals because they don't meet all three screens that I mentioned to before. But we've got a very strong balance sheet. We're busy pounding pavement out there looking at deals. And you know, I think in line with our Vision 2027, you'll continue to see Clean Harbors do deals on into the future.
We look forward to seeing that. We're at the end of our time. Thank you, as always, for a great discussion. Hope everyone has a productive rest of their day at the conference. Stay safe, everyone. Take care. Thank you.
All right. Thank you all.
Thanks, Noah, for having us.