KAEFER enters new partnership

Bre­men, Ger­many

Industrial services leader KAEFER welcomes SMS group and Altor as shareholders, forming a future oriented partnership with the existing shareholder family

We are de­lighted to an­nounce that KAEFER will enter into a part­ner­ship with the Ger­many based SMS group (‘SMS’) and the European PE-fund Altor Fund V (‘Altor’) dom­i­ciled in Sweden, who, to­gether, will be­come a 50% share­holder in KAEFER. The new share­hold­ers will part­ner with the cur­rent KAEFER share­holder fam­ily who will con­tinue to hold the re­main­ing 50% in KAEFER. The in­vest­ment agree­ment, which also provides for a cash con­tri­bu­tion into KAEFER by Altor and SMS, has been signed by the owner fam­ily, Altor and SMS on 08 Decem­ber 2021. The agree­ment is still sub­ject to cus­tom­ary reg­u­lat­ory clear­ance.

KAEFER holds a lead­ing po­s­i­tion as a glob­ally act­ive as­set in­teg­rity ser­vices and solu­tion pro­vider. Headquartered in Bre­men, Ger­many, the Group has built a strong repu­ta­tion with cli­ents around the world for its best-in-class crafts­man­ship and qual­ity over its 100+ years his­tory as a fam­ily-owned busi­ness. With this part­ner­ship, KAEFER is well po­si­tioned to suc­ceed in the highly com­pet­it­ive mar­ket for tech­nical in­dus­trial ser­vices. We also plan to de­velop ad­di­tional abil­it­ies to fo­cus on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ments like de­car­bon­isa­tion, en­ergy trans­ition and LNG, sup­por­ted by KAE­FER’s cur­rent fam­ily share­hold­ers and our new part­ners. With the ad­di­tional cash con­tri­bu­tion, we can build on a solid plat­form for a suc­cess­ful fu­ture of our busi­ness.

SMS group is a fam­ily-owned busi­ness headquartered in Dus­sel­dorf, Ger­many, and glob­ally act­ive in 95 loc­a­tions. SMS are renowned world­wide for their fu­ture-ori­ented tech­no­lo­gies and out­stand­ing ex­pert­ise within the metals in­dustry. With their 150 years of ex­per­i­ence in in­dus­trial pro­ject busi­ness and di­gital knowhow, SMS will sup­port us in our vis­ion to provide ad­di­tional value to our cli­ents.

Altor is a fam­ily of in­vest­ment funds fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing me­dium sized com­pan­ies to their full po­ten­tial and has a track-re­cord of con­sist­ently gen­er­at­ing very strong re­turns and en­dur­ing value. Altor strives to make a real dif­fer­ence as a valu­able long-term part­ner for founders and man­age­ment in build­ing world class com­pan­ies. In­vest­ing in KAEFER, Altor will sup­port global M&A and ex­cel­lence strategy.

Mor­itz Koch, Head of the KAEFER share­holder fam­ily and Chair­man of the KAEFER Ad­vis­ory Board, noted that “This is a key mile­stone for KAEFER in shap­ing our fu­ture and open­ing a new chapter of our com­pany his­tory. SMS and Altor have been di­li­gently se­lec­ted and are our real part­ners of choice as long-term ori­ented and fam­ily share­hold­ers. I am fully con­vinced that this part­ner­ship will fur­ther strengthen our busi­ness and will po­s­i­tion KAEFER very fa­vour­ably to play an act­ive role in an ever more com­pet­it­ive mar­ket en­vir­on­ment.”

“Our cli­ents will con­tinue to re­ceive the same high-qual­ity and re­li­able ser­vices plus the ex­tra value offered by all part­ners work­ing to­gether to in­crease our com­pet­it­ive strength” says Dr Ro­land Gärber Co-CEO Op­er­a­tions at KAEFER. “We are cer­tain that this is an ex­cel­lent step to­wards reach­ing the goals of our stra­tegic pro­gramme and bey­ond”, adds Steen E. Hansen, Co-CEO Fin­ance at KAEFER.

“We are truly im­pressed by the busi­ness that the KAEFER fam­ily has built over more than a cen­tury.” says Gio­vanna Maag, Part­ner at Altor, “We are proud to be able to part­ner with the two com­pan­ies SMS and KAEFER. To­gether we will in­vest in KAE­FER’s stra­tegic roadmap to con­tinue suc­ceed­ing in­ter­na­tion­ally, and we look for­ward to work­ing with the fam­ily and the man­age­ment team.”

Press contact

Fran­cisca Gor­go­dian
KAEFER Group
Headquar­ters Ger­many

Phone: +49 421 3055 0
Mail: press@kaefer.com