Cleanaway picks Macquarie Telecom to roll out SD-WAN across 350-plus sites

Macquarie Telecom has won a contract to replace and modernise the network infrastructure of Cleanaway Waste Management, deploying SD-WAN technology across more than 350 sites nationwide.

Cleanaway, Australia's largest publicly listed waste management and resource recovery company, selected Macquarie Telecom following a competitive tender process.

The deal covers a full network transformation to software-defined wide area networking technology from Netskope, drawing on the existing Macquarie–Netskope partnership, which the companies said has delivered a SASE framework for mid-market and enterprise organisations.

Cleanaway operates a fleet of more than 6,200 vehicles and employs more than 9,700 people, many of whom depend on stable connectivity to carry out safety-critical work.

The new network is designed to support video capture and monitoring across sites, helping frontline workers manage safety incidents including vehicle fires and waste-handling issues. Data from onboard sensors and cameras feeds into a central control room to support real-time decisions.

Cleanaway said the network also forms the foundation for future initiatives under its Blueprint 2030 2.0 strategy, including fleet analytics and AI-supported operations - work it described as impossible without a reliable underlying network.

Twenty-five sites are now active following a pilot phase, with the full rollout across the national footprint expected to be complete by April 2027.

"We needed the right technical solution to strengthen our connectivity, and what set Macquarie Telecom apart has been its willingness to genuinely understand our business and the day-to-day reality of our sites," said Matt Gurrie, head of IT infrastructure at Cleanaway.

"Macquarie adapted its own offering to fit what we actually needed and treated our problems as their own - that's the difference between buying a product and building a partnership."

"When we saw the scale of what was at stake - hundreds of sites, thousands of trucks, and thousands of people relying on that infrastructure to protect themselves and their communities - we knew this network had to be built around their operations," said Marija Harris, group executive at Macquarie Telecom.

"Supporting work of this significance is a responsibility we don't take lightly, which is why our job doesn't end at deployment. We're focused on ensuring this network holds up when it matters most and as the foundation for what Cleanaway builds next.”