Cairns Group is a privately owned Waste Management and Recycling company, operating throughout the Manawatu and Horowhenua regions.

Ash Cairns purchased the City's oldest established waste collection business, then called Boatwater's Transport in 1980. At that stage, the company had three old Bedford trucks and one staff member. Business consisted of manual collections from shops, dairies, restaurants, service stations and private residences.

In 1982, Ash changed the name to Cairns Bins. At the same time, he set up the company's first bin operation, starting with 50 bins measuring 2m3, plus a crane-lifter on an old Bedford truck.

Over the years the company has grown into one of New Zealand's largest privately-owned waste management companies, with day-to-day operations now covering the Horowhenua, Manawatu, Palmerston North City and Tararua regions, and involving around 30 staff and vehicles in operations that include:

• Rubbish Skip collections
• Crane-lift bin collections
• Large roll-on roll-off bulk bin services
• Wheelie Bins (in the Horowhenua coastal towns)
• Bulk recycling collections
• Bulk waste line-haul
• Transfer Stations in Palmerston North and Feilding
• Bulk liquid waste cartage & effluent spreading
• Medical waste collection for disposal
• Engineering of specialised waste equipment

This year the Cairns Group will establish a first-of-a-kind, Large Materials Recovery Facility at the Matthews Avenue Transfer Station in Palmerston North. This LMRF will provide a mechanized sorting process for all waste collected by the Group, as well as sorting all the waste material brought to the facility by the public and by commercial clients.

This initiative will complement and partner with the ‘Small' Materials Recovery Facility which has been established by the PNCC to sort the domestic recyclables collected by the expanded kerbside collection service.