The $2 ''start-up'' company that bought out Energy Services Invironmental and now operates an oil regeneration plant in Hume is owned by two of the people at the helm when a fire at ESI's Mitchell plant locked down the suburb for days in 2011.
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Rodney Larsen, operations manager of Transformer Maintenance Services, says the new company has no connection with the events at Mitchell and no responsibility for the clean-up of the site.
Mr Larsen said any inquiries about the Mitchell site should be referred to Nigel Wallace, ESI's sole remaining director, in Auckland, New Zealand. Mr Wallace has not responded to emails from Fairfax Media.
Mr Larsen was operations manager of ESI Australia at the time of the Mitchell blaze on September 15, 2011. He was a director of the company from April 2009 to May 31, 2012. He holds a $1 share in TMS.
Kathy Cantrill, TMS's sales and marketing manager and a director of the new company, was the sales/marketing manager at ESI Australia from August 2007 to August 2012. She owns the other $1 share in TMS.
''ESI was going to close the Australian operation; to protect jobs we arranged to purchase assets,'' Mr Larsen said.
The TMS website makes no mention of the Mitchell fire and says ''the company was founded in the ACT in 2012 with the purchase of ESI Australia'' and that ''a new factory and offices had been established at Hume''.
Initial approval for that development had been sought by ESI but, after the sale, the authorisation was varied to reflect the change of ownership.
There is still an Energy Services Invironmental office in the ACT, according to the company's website. It is at Mitchell and the name for the contact is Rodney Larsen. Calls to the number provided are put through to the Transformer Management Services switchboard.
''I am not ESI's contact in Australia,'' said Mr Larsen, who did not return calls from the media at the time of the Mitchell fire.
TMS was first registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on August 16, 2012. The purchase of ESI took place on or around September 1, 2012.
When asked what TMS had received for its money when it bought ESI, Mr Larsen said it was mainly plant and equipment.
The Mitchell site and responsibility for its decontamination is in the hands of ESI, which is owned by Energy Electric Co Ltd of Taranaki, New Zealand.
ESI was first registered on March 4, 2002. All of its other Australian operations have been taken over by the $2 ''start-up'' owned by Mr Larsen and Ms Cantrill. These include the new factory and company headquarters in Hume, and branches opened in Rockingham, Western Australia, in 2010 and in Queensland.
The ACT is the head office of TMS, listed as 57 Raws Crescent, Hume. The near-new facility at Hume was commissioned by ESI before the sale to TMS.
The original authorisation was granted by the Environment Protection Authority (ACT Government Environment and Sustainable Development) to ESI on April 19, 2012. It was subsequently varied to reflect the change of ownership to TMS.
The site can recover, process or dispose more than 20 tonnes of waste petroleum products a year. All material or waste accepted for processing must be free of polychlorinated biphenyls.
PCBs are the materials linked to the Mitchell fire that sparked widespread fears of chemical contamination across northern Canberra.
The authorisation is for ''an unlimited period'' (subject to annual review) even though it had been reported last year that the Hume facility was a ''temporary expedient''.
Mr Larsen was one of two men who stood down as ESI directors after the fire and before the sale to TMS.
He ceased to be a director on May 31, 2012. Peter Gwynn of Selangor in Malaysia stood down on July 27. This left Nigel Wallace as the sole director.
The ESI website says Mr Gwynn represents the ESI Group in Malaysia, India and Indonesia.
Other former directors of ESI Australia are Clive Avery and William Young. Both are residents of Taranaki in NZ, home base for Energy Electric Co, which ASIC lists as the Australian firm's ''ultimate holding company''.