Many know the feeling. Walking towards your car and seeing that white ticket wrapped in plastic stuck under the wiper. It turns out that those little pieces of paper are a goldmine for the companies that collect parking fines.

The country's two largest privately operated parking companies, Europark and Q-Park, combined to rake in nearly 500 million kroner last year. That is 53.5 million kroner more than the year before and translates to a 12 percent increase in profits.

Europark’s numbers were up nine percent while Q-Park had to make due with a three percent rise in income.

The two companies are responsible for monitoring the parking in garages and in around many of the country’s shopping centres, city centres, as well as surface car parks.

Michael Christiansen, Europark’s director, declined to say exactly how much he expected his company to earn this year, only that both the top and bottom lines were looking better than 2011.

The combined earnings of the two parking giants puts them in the same league as Parkering København, the city’s municipal parking control, which is the country’s top parking earner and last year stuck tickets worth just over 530 million kroner in fines on motorist’s windscreens.