Stockholm-based Envac, which as Centralsug installed the world’s first vacuum waste collection system in 1961, has run the underground waste network of Lisbon’s Parque das Nações since it was built for Expo ’98. Its Portuguese branch, Envac Ibéria, S.A. (NIF 980114454), works from Av. D. João II 50 in Lisbon and in December 2024 signed a €4.995 million, three-year contract with the City of Lisbon to operate and maintain the system.
Envac designs, builds and operates automated vacuum waste collection systems, in which residents drop bags into street or building inlets and an air stream carries the waste through underground pipes to a central collection station. The company traces its history to 1961, when it installed the world’s first vacuum waste system under the name Centralsug. The parent company is Envac AB in Stockholm. The group says it has about 1,200 installations on six continents and 35 offices in 20 countries, organised in five regions. Portugal falls under Envac EMEA, led by Carlos Bernad, who is also CEO of Envac Iberia.
Envac’s Portuguese reference is Parque das Nações, the district built for the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition. According to Envac, the system went into service in 1998. It now serves about 40,000 homes through more than 1,500 valves and 40 km of underground pipe, and collects two fractions: residual waste and packaging (paper and plastic). Envac puts the total collected at more than 241,000 tonnes. The Portuguese operation is Envac Ibéria, S.A., registered in Portugal under NIF 980114454, the number series Portugal gives to non-resident entities. Its office is at Av. D. João II 50, 4th floor, in Parque das Nações (envac.pt). On 13 December 2024 the Município de Lisboa signed a three-year (1,095-day) contract with Envac Ibéria worth €4,995,427 to operate, run and technically maintain the system. The contract was awarded through a public tender (base.gov.pt contract 11088120).
The contract was published on base.gov.pt on 16 December 2024. In 2025 the Parque das Nações parish council posted a series of notices on the network: works on the pneumatic collection system (April 2025), the City of Lisbon’s progress in restoring the Envac network in the district’s southern zone (July 2025), and the restoration of collection in that zone (September 2025). In April 2026 it published a further City of Lisbon communiqué on Envac in the southern zone.
Envac is a Swedish technology supplier earning recurring service revenue from a Portuguese municipality, and the contract is public and on record. The Parque das Nações network is more than 25 years old and Lisbon has just renewed its operating contract for three years, so the system is a working showcase in Portugal for other municipalities and developers. The 2025 repairs in the southern zone also show the upkeep that large urban networks need over time.
Sources: base.gov.pt contract 11088120 (Município de Lisboa / Envac Ibéria, value, dates, term); envac.pt (Lisbon office); Envac Group — Expo Park project page (system data); Envac Group — Organisation (offices, management); nif.pt (NIF); Junta de Freguesia do Parque das Nações notices via Google News. Fetched 13 November 2026.
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