Rentokil revenue jumps as bedbugs crawl over Paris

PARISIAN businesses have been scrambling to kill insects, rats and other pests ahead of the Olympic Games, after an infestation of bedbugs last year.

Pest control business Rentokil said demand for its services surged in France last year. The London-listed company said its pest control revenues jumped by 21.8pc in Europe last year, naming France as a main driver of this, along with Germany and Benelux.

Paris was overwhelmed by bedbugs last year, with reports of the insects swarming the seats of trains and buses.

The outbreak alarmed tourists and sparked fears that a prolonged outbreak could damage the success of the Paris Olympics, which begins in July.

Mathilde Panot, a politician with the France Unbowed party, brought a test tube full of bedbugs into the country’s parliament last October, warning about a “wave of panic that has seized the country”.

Clara Quinque, marketing manager at Rentokil’s French arm, said in an interview with industry publication Pest Control Technology last November her company had seen a 60pc increase in requests for bedbug services in Paris compared with the previous year.

Bedbugs are small insects that can live in furniture or bedding. They are parasitic, biting people and leaving itchy marks. Outbreaks are notoriously difficult to eradicate, in part because bedbugs have grown resistant to chemical treatments.

As well as chemical treatments, bedbugs can be killed by raising the temperature inside a property until the pests suffocate.

France’s bedbug crisis sparked fears that the outbreak could spread to London. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, said last October that bedbugs were “a real source of concern” and TFL was cleaning all transport infrastructure nightly to guard against outbreaks.

He said at the time: “We are speaking to our friends in Paris to see if there are any lessons to be learnt but for a variety of reasons we don’t think those issues will arise in London; but there is no complacency from TFL.”

The capital has suffered contained outbreaks over recent months. In November, Ealing Central Library, in West London, shut after staff found bedbugs. Rentokil was hired to exterminate them.

Last month, civil servants at the UK Health Security Agency, in Canary Wharf, were told to work from home because the building was infested.

Rentokil’s global revenues jumped by 45pc in 2023. Shares ended up 18pc yesterday.