July 2016
Agilitas, a pan-European mid-market private equity firm, today announces the sale of its portfolio company Ionisos, to Ardian, an independent private investment company, for an undisclosed consideration.
Agilitas invested in Ionisos, alongside management, in December 2014. During Agilitas’s ownership, Ionisos has successfully boosted its sales & marketing efforts gaining strategic global European customers as well as growing sales to existing customers across a wider range of technologies and services. Ionisos also invested in its sterilisation facilities, adding capacity and increasing efficiency, thereby improving the service rate to its wide customer base.The management team has been strengthened by the addition of Laurent Gareau, Executive Chairman, Christophe Herkens, Operations Director, and Mike O’Neill, Business Development Consultant.
Based in the Lyon region and founded in 1993, Ionisos is one of the leading global providers of cold sterilisation services for medical devices, raw and finished materials for the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, and for the food and pharma packaging sectors. Ionisos is one of the few companies licensed to offer all three cold sterilisation technologies. The group has ca. 100 employees across 7 sites in France, Spain and China.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Serge Touati, Partner at Agilitas and a Steering Committee member of Ionisos said: “We are delighted to have helped the management team at Ionisos make such great progress in transforming this strategic business.Their great achievement is the product of much insight, dedication and energy, and we wish them well for the future.”
Laurent Gareau, Executive Chairman of Ionisos, added: “We are proud of all that we have achieved at Ionisos in a relatively short time and we have enjoyed working with Agilitas to grow and improve what was already a very good company.”
Michel Gominet, and Christoph Herkens, respectively CEO and COO of Ionisos, highlighted: “Thanks to Agilitas, we have been given the means to transform the business, operating at the highest levels of quality and service. On behalf of the group, we would like to thank Agilitas for the contribution to our metamorphosis. We look forward to the cooperation with Ardian, leveraging their expertise and international network for the next step of our development”.
Martin Calderbank, Partner at Agilitas and a Steering Committee member of Ionisos, explained:“Ionisos is a good example of what Agilitas does.We invested in a strong defensible business providing high quality essential services to fulfil a fundamental need, and we backed a strong management team who have transformed that business to a higher level of growth, efficiency and quality.”
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