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PCF Insurance Services Secures $500 Million Preferred Equity Investment Co-Led by Carlyle Global Credit and HGGC

Valuation of $4.7 billion driven by 10% organic growth

LEHI, UTAH—February 17, 2023 — PCF Insurance Services (“PCF”), a top 20 U.S. insurance brokerage firm, today announced that it has secured a $500 million preferred equity investment in a transaction co-led by Carlyle’s Global Credit platform and private equity firm HGGC, an existing minority investor. PCF Insurance, led by Founder, Chairman and CEO Peter C. Foy and Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer Felix Morgan, also received significant investment participation in the transaction with funds managed by Owl Rock, a division of Blue Owl, and Crescent Capital, both of which have existing minority equity stakes in the business. At the time of investment, the valuation of PCF Insurance is $4.7 billion. J.P. Morgan served as the sole placement agent to PCF Insurance in connection with the transaction.

 

PCF Insurance is a risk management, benefits design, and insurance brokerage services company serving more than 415,000 clients. Since executing its management-led buyout in November 2021, PCF Insurance completed more than 100 partner transactions and increased its revenue to $700 million, while maintaining organic growth of 10%, by year-end 2022. Focusing on its proven practices, innovative, data-driven strategies, entrepreneurial spirit and the strong local relationships of its Agency Partners, PCF Insurance leverages the industry knowledge and experience of its more than 3,100 employees across 38 states to provide its first-class, highly diversified suite of services.

 

“This transaction marks a significant milestone in our pursuit of building a premier insurance brokerage firm in the U.S.,” said Foy. “We have built our agency-centric business model around long-term, sustainable growth, and I’m proud that PCF is positioned to continue investing in the growth of our agencies, especially during these recent times of economic uncertainty. We are grateful for the contributions of our partner investors who have supported us with the unique opportunity to accelerate growth.”

 

Gary Jacovino, Managing Director for Carlyle Global Credit, said: “PCF Insurance Services has experienced tremendous growth as a result of its unique client- and employee-centric operating model. We are delighted to be partnering with an exceptional management team and group of Agency Partners, and are confident PCF will achieve its long-term strategic growth objectives with the support of Carlyle Global Credit, HGGC and our partner investors.”

 

Matt Roesch, Principal of HGGC and PCF Insurance board member, added: “We continue to be impressed with the growth and operational advancements PCF has achieved since the onset of our partnership in 2020. We elected to continue as minority shareholders after the management buyout in 2021 because we see a very bright future for the business, and we are thrilled to extend our partnership with PCF, working in collaboration with Carlyle’s Global Credit platform, to help fuel its next phase of growth.”

 

 

About PCF Insurance Services

A top 20 U.S. broker headquartered in Lehi, Utah, PCF Insurance Services is a leading full-service consultant and insurance brokerage firm offering a broad array of commercial, life and health, employee benefits, and workers’ compensation solutions. Propelled by its people, PCF Insurance’s agency-centric operating model and entrepreneurial environment support its tremendous growth profile, offering partner agencies alignment through equity ownership, significant leadership incentives, and resources. Ranked #20 on Business Insurance’s 2022 Top 100 Brokers and #13 on Insurance Journal’s 2022 Top Property/Casualty Agencies, PCF Insurance is a notable leader in the insurance space, with 3,100 employees across the U.S. Learn more at pcfins.com.

 

About Carlyle

Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with deep industry expertise that deploys private capital across three business segments: Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Global Investment Solutions. With $373 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2022, Carlyle’s purpose is to invest wisely and create value on behalf of its investors, portfolio companies and the communities in which it lives and invests. Carlyle employs more than 2,100 people in 29 offices across five continents. Further information is available at carlyle.com. Follow Carlyle on Twitter @OneCarlyle.

 

About HGGC

HGGC is a leading middle-market private equity firm with over $6.9 billion in cumulative capital commitments. Based in Palo Alto, California, HGGC is distinguished by its Advantaged Investing approach that enables the firm to source and acquire scalable businesses through partnerships with management teams, founders and sponsors who reinvest alongside HGGC, creating a strong alignment of interests. Since its inception in 2007, HGGC has completed more than 600 platform investments, add-on acquisitions, recapitalizations, and liquidity events with an aggregate transaction value of over $71 billion. More information, including a complete list of current and former portfolio companies, is available at hggc.com.

 

About Blue Owl

Blue Owl is a global alternative asset manager with $138.2 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2022. Anchored by a strong permanent capital base, the firm deploys private capital across Direct Lending, GP Capital Solutions and Real Estate strategies on behalf of Institutional and Private Wealth clients. Blue Owl’s flexible, consultative approach helps position the firm as a partner of choice for businesses seeking capital solutions to support their sustained growth. The firm’s management team is comprised of seasoned investment professionals with more than 30 years of experience building alternative investment businesses. Blue Owl employs over 545 people across 10 offices globally. For more information, please visit blueowl.com.

 

About Crescent Capital

Crescent Capital is a global credit investment manager with $40+ billion of assets under management. For over 30 years, the firm has focused on below investment grade credit through strategies that invest in marketable and privately originated debt securities including senior bank loans, high yield bonds, and private senior, unitranche, and junior debt securities. Crescent Capital is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago and London and more than 210 employees globally. For more information, please visit crescentcap.com.

 

# # #

 

 

For PCF Insurance Services

Dix & Eaton

Amy McGahan

216-241-3027

amcgahan@dix-eaton.com

 

For Carlyle

Charlie Bristow

+44 7384 513568
charlie.bristow@carlyle.com

 

For HGGC

Tom Faust

646-502-3513

tfaust@stantonprm.com

 

For Blue Owl

Nick Theccanat

212-970-6868

nick.theccanat@blueowl.com

 

For Crescent Capital

Investor Relations

310-235-5901

investor.relations@crescentcap.com

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Donier Gastronomie Oy continues its expansion by acquiring Cheese Witches Oy

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Folmer

Donier Gastronomie Oy, a portfolio company of Folmer Equity Fund II Ky, has acquired its
long-term business partner Cheese Witches Oy. The deal implements Donier
Gastronomie’s growth strategy and brings more know-how and opportunities for the
specialty cheese segment.

Fast-growing wholesaler Donier Gastronomie Oy, which serves high-quality domestic and European food products,
expands its operations by acquiring Cheese Witches Oy. With the acquisition, Donier Gastronomie’s operational
capabilities in the specialty cheese market expand further. Donier Gastronomie’s current service offering and
networks will be supplemented, especially on the retail side, with possibilities to realize significant synergies. Cheese
Witches continues to operate as part of the Donier Gastronomie group. The transaction has no impact on the
companies’ employees or other relations.

Cheese Witches’ revenue is approximately EUR 3 million, and its employees have extensive experience of working
with special cheeses. Cheese Witches’ entrepreneur Merja Sydänmaa-Kaartinen continues to manage the company
and becomes a shareholder of the Donier Gastronomie group. After the acquisition, the revenue of the Donier
Gastronomie group is approximately EUR 16 million.

For more information:
Managing Director, entrepreneur Alexandre Donier, Donier Gastronomie Oy, tel. +358 44 033 0028,
alexandre.donier@doniergastronomie.fi (in English)
Merja Sydänmaa-Kaartinen, entrepreneur, Cheese Witches Oy, tel. +358 41 319 5672,
merja.sydanmaa-kaartinen@cheesewitches.fi

Donier Gastronomie Oy is a Finnish wholesaler of high-quality food products specializing in the import and
wholesale of dairy, meat, seafood and poultry products. www.doniergastronomie.com
Cheese Witches Oy is a full-service specialty cheese house. The company’s products are sold in more than 60 retail
stores.

Folmer Management Oy is a Finnish private equity company investing in Finnish SMEs. Folmer creates value
through active development work. Folmer provides companies with support and professional experience – a
requirement for success. www.folmer.fi
Folmer Equity Fund II Ky benefits from the support of the European Union under the Equity Facility for Growth
established under Regulation (EU) No 1287/2013 of the European Parliament and the Council establishing a
Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and small and medium enterprises (COSME) (2014-2020).
Businesses can contact selected financial institutions in their country to access EU financing:
www.access2finance.eu.

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Altor acquires majority of VTU and partners with management

Stockholm/Vienna, 17/02/2023 – Altor Funds (“Altor”) have signed an agreement to acquire a majority in VTU Group GmbH (“VTU”), a leading Life Sciences and Green Transition process engineering company, from funds advised by DPE Deutsche Private Equity Management III GmbH. VTU’s management will reinvest in the Company.  Altor will support VTU’s strategy to become a European leader in high value-added process engineering services for Life Sciences industries and a sector specialist in Green Transition process engineering.  The closing is subject to regulatory approval.

 

Founded in 1990 in Graz, Austria, VTU is a process engineering company servicing blue-chip customers in the Life Sciences and Fine Chemicals industries as well as in Green Transition projects in existing and emerging industries. The Company provides quality services for its customers along the whole value-chain of their investment projects: from project development, design, high-end digitalisation to project management as an integrated part of VTU’s services for structurally growing industries. VTU is an EPCMv provider (Engineering, Procurement, Construction Management and Validation) with more than 1,200 employees across Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Belgium.

 

In 2022, VTU reported annual revenues of approx. 175 million Euros. Over more than a decade, VTU has grown revenues and its employee base by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 20 percent.  

 

Dr. Friedrich Fröschl, CEO at VTU Group, said: “We were deeply impressed by the Altor partnership approach from the outset: an entrepreneurial mindset, with curiosity, creativity, and sustainability at the core of its DNA. We are convinced that Altor is a perfect match for VTU Group as we embark on the next phase of VTU’s success story. We are very excited to working together with the Altor team and create sustainable value for our customers, employees and allstakeholders.“

 

Giovanna Maag, Partner at Altor, said: “We are excited to invest in VTU and looking forward to partnering with its strong and experienced management team. The Company builds on very strong foundations: it has advanced process engineering capabilities, a reputation for quality, long-standing and trusted relationships with numerous blue-chip clients in the Life Sciences sector and provides process engineering know-how for Green Transition applications.” 

  

The investment in VTU marks Altor’s fifth acquisition in the DACH region. Currently, Altor is invested in Zahneins (dental practices), oceansapart (athleisure), Käfer (industrial services),  and Kommunalkredit (financial services; closing pending).

The Altor investment in VTU is another example for the firm’s investment strategy that puts a strong emphasis on partnering with companies with compelling sustainability agendas. Examples for this approach are H2GreenSteel (green steel powered by green hydrogen), OX2 (one of Europe’s leading developers of renewable energy sources) and Trioworld (circular plastics), amongst others.   

 

 

 

About Altor

Since inception, the family of Altor funds has raised EUR 8.3 billion in total commitments. The funds have invested in more than 85 companies. The investments have been made in medium sized predominantly Nordic companies with the aim to create value through growth initiatives and operational improvements. Among current and past investments are Carnegie, C WorldWide, Sbanken, OX2, H2 Green Steel, Vianode and Svea Solar.

For more information visit www.altor.com

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Open-source platform Kern AI raises €2.7 million in seed funding to power data-centric natural language processing

Seedcamp

The advent of ChatGPT is just the tip of the iceberg of the emerging natural language processing (NLP) technologies and applications that are fundamentally changing human-computer interaction and, ultimately, our daily work.

With the increased adoption of model architectures and frameworks, developers are focusing more and more on improving the data used to train AI systems. Taking a data-centric approach enables them to use a set of common algorithms and then increase the number of training samples severalfold (e.g., from 10,000 to 50,000) or reduce the number of errors in the training data.

This is why we are excited to back Kern AI, a data-centric platform to power natural language products, workflows, and ETL pipelines. Founded by Johannes Hötter and Henrik Wenck in November 2020, the Germany-based company is building a platform designed for developers who want to implement data-centric NLP solutions. Its use cases range from internal workflows for operational or analytical purposes, such as complex customer-facing services, to building sophisticated NLP applications with their platform as the training database.

Johannes Hötter highlights:

“Kern AI aims to build software with an outstanding developer experience. We strive to provide users with the flexibility to create what they want and to reduce the time between an idea and its implementation. We are confident that Natural Language Processing (NLP) will continue to grow, and with Kern AI’s modular platform, developers have all the resources they need to deploy use cases. This is what we excel at and what we want to demonstrate to the world.”

Since launching in July 2022, the open-source version of refinery and of the content-library bricks have reached several thousand developers. Both projects are available to download on Kern AI’s GitHub page.

Aiming to empower developers to manage complexity, the Kern AI ecosystem consists of four products:

  • refinery – combines training data and algorithms in a way that developers and data scientists can easily build NLP automations
  • bricks – a collection of modular and standardized code snippets which can be directly integrated into refinery
  • gates – an online monitoring and inference API for data-centric models
  • workflow – the orchestration layer for natural language-driven tasks that allows building complex workflows, which can be triggered by a variety of events

The company’s suite of products is used by data scientists at AI-driven organizations (including Samsung, Barmenia, DocuSign, co:here, and Seedcamp-back crowddev) to perform label automation, cleansing, and monitoring. Further possible applications include retrieval, outbound classification, named entity recognition, sentimental analysis, and more.

On why we invested, our Managing Partner Carlos Espinal comments:

“Johannes and Henrik have a deep understanding of the needs of NLP developers and data scientists and the ability to execute efficiently at scale. With their unique product insights and developer-centric approach, Kern AI is well positioned to become a fundamental tool for every company leveraging NLP.”

We are excited to co-lead Kern AI’s  €2.7 million seed round alongside Faber, with participation from xdeck, another.vc, TKM Family Office, and business angels Marcus Nagel, Julius and Sebastian Heinz, Nicolas Peters, and Gerrit de Veer.

With the fresh funding, the team plans to expand their platform’s capabilities and use case catalogue, grow their developer community, and make it generally available to the public.

Starting today, Kern AI also onboards individual developers in their free tier. Join the waitlist and request a demo at kern.ai.

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Wendel Growth invests in Brigad, an online tool connecting self-employed professionals with hospitality and care establishments

Wendel

Wendel (Euronext: MF.FP), through its Wendel Growth1 investment arm, announced today the acquisition of a minority stake in Brigad with an equity investment of €7 million.

Brigad is an online tool connecting self-employed professionals with hospitality and care establishments.
Brigad meets a dual need:
• offering companies operating in tense sectors the support they need by connecting them with a community of around 15,000 skilled professionals and,
• meeting the growing demand for more flexible and diversified work patterns. Indeed, self-employed professionals are free, allowing them to choose their missions and arrange their work, according to their personal schedule and professional objectives.

Founded in 2016, Brigad has been a mission-driven company since 2020. It now operates in the 5 main cities in France (Paris, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux and Marseille) as well as in London, Manchester and Birmingham. Brigad has 150 employees.
Antoine Izsak, Head of Growth Equity, said:
« We have been very impressed by the level of satisfaction expressed by talents and companies who are using Brigad. We look forward to working with Brigad to expand the company’s mission and technical skills of its teams far beyond its current borders, into new geographies and sectors.”

Florent Malbranche, Brigad CEO, stated:
“We are delighted to welcome Wendel into Brigad’s capital as it shows its willingness to invest and promote professions. In addition, its financial expertise will be a major asset for Brigad’s future growth.”
1 Formerly Wendel Lab

About Wendel Growth:
With Wendel Growth (formerly Wendel Lab), Wendel invests via funds or directly in innovative, high-growth companies. With close to €192 million already committed through the initiative in recent years, Wendel Growth seeks direct investment and coinvestment opportunities in startups. To make these direct investments, like the 2019 investment in AlphaSense and Tadaweb that should be finalized in 2023, Wendel Growth is supported by a team experienced in this asset class, including Antoine Izsak, who joined Wendel early 2022 as Head of Growth Equity. Mr. Izsak was previously Investment Director at Bpifrance. Wendel’s ambition is to invest up to €50 million in scale ups in Europe and North America and will continue to invest in funds.

More information: https://www.wendelgroup.com/en/companies/wendel-growth/

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Ratos Company HL Display to acquire Akriform

Ratos

HL Display (HL) has signed an agreement to acquire Akriform Plast AB (Akriform), a producer of bulk bins and custom-made solutions for grocery retail and branded goods suppliers. The acquisition will strengthen HL’s leading position in Europe in the fast-growing segment of packaging-free merchandising and create a strong offer of custom-made solutions for customers in the Nordic markets.

Founded in 1980, Akriform has built a strong position as an expert in the production of bulk merchandising and custom-made solutions, providing high quality products to their customers. The company is based in Sollentuna, Sweden and has annual sales of 80 MSEK.

“HL Display’s successful growth journey continues. The acquisition of Akriform is completely in line with Ratos’ acquisition strategy where additional acquisitions in existing companies are an important part, and is another statement of strength in HL Display,” says Anders Slettengren, Chairman of the Board of HL Display and Executive Vice President, Ratos.

“Akriform has built an impressive reputation as a producer of custom-made retail solutions, thanks to a team of experts in design, development and production. The product portfolio is especially strong in the fast-growing segment of packaging-free merchandising where HL see increasing demand from both retailers, branded goods suppliers and shoppers across Europe. The merged product ranges will create a strong offer for our customers, supporting our position as the leading supplier of in-store communication and merchandising solutions for the grocery industry,” says Björn Borgman, CEO, HL Display.

The acquisition will be completed on 1 March 2023.

About HL Display
HL is a global leader in in-store merchandising and communication solutions, helping customers to create a better shopping experience around the world. Founded in 1954, HL today is present in more than 70 countries and solutions can be found in 330,000 stores, supporting customers to grow sales, inspire shoppers, drive automation, and reduce waste. The three customer segments are retail food, branded good suppliers and non-food retail.

The HL Display Group has its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden and sales offices in 23 countries covering 39 markets as well as distribution partners covering the remaining markets globally. The five production facilities are located in Sweden, Poland, the UK and China and handle a variety of industrial processes, including plastics and metal fabrication, printing and assembly.The company has 1,100 employees and net sales of 1,900 MSEK. HL is a wholly owned subsidiary of the listed Swedish Business Group Ratos.

For more information, please contact:
Josefine Uppling, VP Communication, Ratos, +46 76 114 54 21
Björn Borgman, CEO, HL Display, +46 72 264 17 90

About Ratos
Ratos is a business group consisting of 16 companies divided into three business areas: Construction & Services, Consumer and Industry. The companies have approximately SEK 32 billion in net sales (LTM). Our business concept is to own and develop companies that are or can become market leaders. We have a distinct corporate culture and strategy – everything we do is based on our core values: Simplicity, Speed in execution and It’s All About People. We enable independent companies to excel by being part of something larger. People, leadership, culture and values are key focus areas.

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Investcorp acquires NetRom Software

Investcorp

Investcorp Technology Partners (“ITP”), a leading global technology investor, today announced that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in NetRom Software (“NetRom” or “the Company”), a leading cloud-first, digital transformation and software engineering firm in the Benelux region. NetRom’s founders, management team and IceLake Capital, will continue to remain shareholders in the business alongside ITP. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Headquartered in Utrecht, the Netherlands, NetRom provides business-critical software engineering solutions, development support and adjacent services to a portfolio of diversified and blue-chip customers in Western Europe and North America, including for example VodafoneZiggo, Transdev and LeasePlan.

NetRom’s long-term commitments to its customers and employees are key elements of its success, resulting in a strong track record of profitable growth, having more than doubled its revenues in the last five years.

ITP’s investment is expected to accelerate the Company’s ambitious growth plans. The Company currently has approximately 500 highly-qualified engineers across 4 offices in the Netherlands and Romania. ITP expects to continue to invest in strengthening its delivery platform, as well as further expanding existing and new service areas, industry verticals and geographies.

ITP has established a market-leading position of investing in lower mid-market technology companies with a specific focus on Software, Data / Analytics, Cyber Security, and Fintech. The investment in NetRom represents the third investment from ITP’s global fund, Investcorp Technology Partners V following its investments in HWG (Cybersecurity) and Zift Solutions (Software).

Georg Knoflach, Managing Director at ITP, stated, “Investcorp Technology Partners is pleased to be partnering with NetRom, a high-growth company offering mission critical products and services to the European software market. We have been impressed not only by the growth trajectory of the Company over the last decade, but also by the founders’ and management team’s incredible commitment to their customers, employees, and state-of-the-art facilities. We are looking forward to working with NetRom’s co-founders and the rest of the NetRom team on their next stage of critical growth.”

Bastiaan Hagenouw, partner at IceLake added: “After closely working with the NetRom management team for the past three-and-a-half years and achieving many milestones, IceLake is excited to continue the growth story together. With great trust in the management team and Investcorp, IceLake is proud and thrilled to continue the journey with NetRom to realise their ambitious goals.”

Han In’t Veld founder and CEO of NetRom, added: “For NetRom it’s a big accomplishment to be able to team up with the professionals at ITP. We see this as a logical and essential step in our journey towards becoming a significant player in the outsourced software product development space. The team at ITP have extensive experience and a long track record of supporting growth in businesses like ours. Together with ITP we will have the means to service our customers better, to increase market share and to conquer new geographical target areas.”

Mircea Negrila co-founder and CTO of NetRom added: “We are excited to be able to team-up with ITP which will allow us to move full speed ahead with the development of the NetRom campus and the NetRom educational programs. Creating state-of-the-art and inspiring, innovative working conditions is a key component of our talent acquisition strategy and our student academy programs have proven to be of critical value for the development of our organization. With the highly complementary skillset and experience that ITP put on the table, we created ideal conditions for further growth.”

Investcorp Technology Partners was advised by PhiDelphi Corporate Finance (M&A advisory), McDermott Will & Emery & Orange Clover (Legal), PwC (Commercial), KPMG (Financial & Tax), Willkie Farr & Gallagher (Legal – Financing), and Marlborough Partners (Debt Advisory). NetRom and IceLake Capital were advised by Houlihan Lokey (M&A Advisory), Allen & Overy (Legal), BCG (Commercial) and Deloitte (Financial & Tax).

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Quadrum Capital Home Portfolio News Vacancies Contact Investor Portal Nederlands André de Koning new CFRO of Quadrum Capital

Quadrum Capital

As of February 1, 2023, Andre de Koning has joined Quadrum Capital as CFRO. This new role within Quadrum in the area of Finance & Risk management reflects the successful growth of organization in recent years.

image

André de Koning

André gained extensive experience in the financial sector and various other segments as an accountant at KPMG. In addition, he has held several CFO positions during his career.

In the past 10 years André was responsible for Finance & Risk management at an investment management company in the role of CFO and board member. The addition of André’s valuable knowledge and experience within the financial sector provides a solid base for the next steps of growth in which Quadrum is developing.

André enjoys working with driven professionals and gets energy from realizing ambitious goals. He values workable and appropriate solutions within the entrepreneurial organization.

Working on further growth and expanding the organization in line with Quadrum’s ambitions and DNA are the reasons for André to make this step.

Categories: People

Madern and CSi packaging join forces to become Madern Industries

Torqx Capital

CSi packaging is proud to announce that it joins forces with Madern Group, a well-established and high-quality player in the post-press converting of paperboard packaging. This further strengthens the position of both companies to serve their customers throughout various post-press production steps, adequately respond to market trends and further solidifies their coverage in Europe, the US and Asia. The combination is backed by Torqx Capital Partners who will become majority shareholder of the group in combination with management.

Jean Madern, former CEO and in the new combination the Chairman of the Advisory Board, comments: “Madern already has a long history of working together with CSi packaging on optimizing client solutions. It is a great step for both companies to further intensify this cooperation by actually becoming one company. CSi packaging perfectly fits the Madern company culture and the high-quality standard we aim to offer our customers and I look forward to seeing my legacy, Madern Group, grow further under the Madern Industries combination.”

Mark van de Klundert, CEO of the new combination of Madern Industries and former CEO of CSi packaging, added: “Joining forces with Madern marks an important milestone in the rapid growth path that CSi packaging has experienced over the last couple of years. Madern is an incredibly strong brand name with an exceptional product, and we look forward to combining solutions of both companies to serve our customers even better, with high quality and high performing solutions. The extensive track record Madern has built in Europe and the US, as well as Asia, will underpin the further growth of both CSi packaging and Madern and will unlock further opportunities for the combined companies in the general folding and liquid packaging markets.”

Rik Leunissen, Partner at Torqx Capital Partners, adds: “We are very excited to be able to form the combination of these two high-quality companies and create a clear, global market leader in its field. We thank Jean Madern for his trust in us and look forward, with his support, to accelerate the growth of Madern Industries under the new leadership.”

About Madern
Founded in 1954, Madern has a long history of excellent craftmanship and has grown to become a household name in the cardboard packaging market with its offering of rotary converting solutions for the general folding and liquid packaging markets. Its extensive experience allows Madern to produce systems and tools with the highest quality available on the market, including the highest speeds and highest durability in terms of waste and energy use. Madern is globally active, with presence in The Netherlands, multiple locations in the US and Hong Kong and offers the highest quality rotary tools focusing on the lowest cost of ownership for its customers and high durability and sustainability. The company’s headquarters are located in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands. For more information, please visit: www.madern.com

About CSi packaging
CSi packaging is the world market leader in development and assembly of high-speed post press automation solutions. Paperboard packaging producers globally work with CSi packaging to automate the logistical handling of printed and cut (‘post press’) packaging material. The solutions provided by CSi packaging help customers to speed up their production process, to reduce the average production costs per unit, and to optimize the output of their expensive printing presses. For the handling of packaging material, the company has developed a range of innovative solutions including blank stackers, stack handlers, case packers and blank feeders. CSi packaging is located in Raamsdonksveer (NL) and Richmond (US). For more information please visit: www.CSipackaging.com

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Ratos company Aibel awarded major contract on Hammerfest LNG

Ratos

Equinor has awarded Aibel an EPCI (Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation) contract for modification work at the Hammerfest LNG facility on behalf of the Snøhvit Unit partners. The contract has a total value of approx. NOK 8 billion.

The Snøhvit Unit partners are: Equinor Energy AS (operator), Petoro AS, TotalEnergies E&P Norge AS, Neptune Energy Norge AS and Wintershall Dea Norge AS.

The EPCI contract comprises engineering, procurement, construction and installation in connection with the Snøhvit Future project, and the scope includes a land-based compression facility and electrification of the Hammerfest LNG plant. The assignment was an option in the FEED contract (Front-End Engineering and Design) that Aibel was awarded in September 2020.

“As owners, we are extremely proud of Aibel’s development in an uncertain environment where the energy crisis is one of the biggest challenges. Their operations secure predictable and safe access to energy for the future. That, combined with the trust they repeatedly receive from their customers, is impressive. Aibel´s future is bright,” says Christian Johansson Gebauer, member of the Board of Directors of Aibel and President, Construction & Services, Ratos.

Aibel will in addition execute further upgrades of existing systems at Hammerfest LNG to prepare the facility for extended life until 2050.

Aibel was the main contractor for the extensive recovery that followed the fire at the facility in September 2020, where Aibel rapidly mobilised around 170 engineers and more than 1,000 operators in rotation to the facility.

“We have been Equinor’s main supplier of maintenance and modification services at Hammerfest LNG since 2006, and our employees have gained good insight into the plant and developed great relationships with Equinor. We have also gained extensive experience from similar modifications and electrification assignments and are very grateful that Equinor selects us as the main contractor in the development of the future LNG facility at Melkøya,” says President and CEO of Aibel, Mads Andersen.

Engineering will start immediately, and Aibel will utilize the organisation from the FEED contract at the office in Asker, in combination with expertise from the modification organisation on the Norwegian west coast and North Norway. At its peak, the project will involve approx. 350 engineers and project personnel.

Aibel will plan and execute large and complex modifications at the facility. In addition, construction of larger modules will take place at Aibel’s yards. Most of the work will be in the period 2024-2026.

Aibel’s part of the project is scheduled for completion in late 2027. The contract award is subject to regulatory approval of the project.

For more information, please contact
Josefine Uppling, VP Communication, Ratos, +46 76 114 54 21, josefine.uppling@ratos.com

About Ratos
Ratos is a business group consisting of 16 companies divided into three business areas: Construction & Services, Consumer and Industry. The companies have approximately SEK 32 billion in net sales (LTM). Our business concept is to own and develop companies that are or can become market leaders. We have a distinct corporate culture and strategy – everything we do is based on our core values: Simplicity, Speed in execution and It’s All About People. We enable independent companies to excel by being part of something larger. People, leadership, culture and values are key focus areas.

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