External growth operation: Akeance assists Grosfillex

Akeance Consulting assists the Grosfillex Group in an external growth operation, for an equity investment in Postep.

The Grosfillex Group is a major player in the plastic extrusion and injection sector, in particular through the Arban company, which has been developing for 40 years a manufacturing activity for windows, entrance doors and roller shutters responding to best quality standards. These products are distributed in France, in particular through a network of dealers.
At the end of 2019, Arban took a stake in Postep, a Polish company also specialized in the manufacture of joinery for European customers.

This external growth operation allows Arban to strengthen its offer through 2 axes:

Products - Postep products are assembled from profiles of major world manufacturers (Veka, Aluprof,…). This addition to the range (Grosfillex joinery coming from clean profiles) will bring a major competitive advantage to its dealer network,
Geographic - Postep's customers are mainly located outside France, thanks to this acquisition, Arban is expanding its distribution area and acquiring the means to distribute in almost all European countries.

Akeance Consulting supported Arban during the due diligence work in enhancing synergies and developing an action plan to double the production capacity of the Postep within 18 months (reorganization and constitution of a second team, investment plan in new means of production and distribution, etc.). This type of very pragmatic approach is also the hallmark of the firm.

About Grosfillex

The Grosfillex group is a specialist in plastic extrusion and injection. It is present in 3 markets which are outdoor products (garden furniture, plant boxes and garden sheds), interior products for the house (furniture, wall covering, partitions and storage), PVC and Aluminum joinery (windows, entrance doors and roller shutters). Always in search of innovations and improvement of product quality, the Grosfillex Group launched a production line dedicated to aluminum joinery 1 year ago and will launch in the coming months a new production line dedicated to PVC joinery.

About Postep

Postep is a Polish company specializing in the manufacture of windows, entrance doors and roller shutters. With a turnover of nearly 5M €, the company exports 75% of its production to European customers, mainly based in France, Germany, Switzerland and Norway.

About Akeance Consulting

Akeance Consulting is a consulting firm that was created around a shared desire to offer a range of services that operationalize the company's strategy. Concretely, we intervene by advising companies during the design of their transformation projects and by supporting them in the implementation.

Akeance Consulting has offices in Paris, Brussels and Luxembourg from which a team of around sixty consultants operates.

The end date

The COVID-19 epidemic sometimes worries us but often confuses us because we don't know when it will all end. Implicitly, we thought that coming out of lockdown would mean the end of the epidemic. And it is not! But when will it all end? In the same way, the wait for the vaccine has given rise to debate: can a vaccine be made in less than a year? Some said there would not be one until the end of 2021. But no one was saying "we don't know". It was necessary to set a date at all costs!

This experience teaches us the importance we place on the "end date". And I think it would be nice to see this "end date" more integrated into the professional world. Consider the case of personal tax audits. The officials ask you questions but never say when they have stopped the audit. No end date for citizen: you don't when the file is completed. In the life of our projects, with Akeance clients, answers without an "end date" are so numerous: I'll look into it, I'll give you the answer by e-mail, we'll meet to discuss it, etc. are answers without an "end date". However, it is the "end date" that sets the pace for projects. It is the "end date" that allows us to move forward, to take the next step, to ask further questions, etc.

Even more trivially, how many meetings have no "end time"? Condominium meetings are caricatures. We often criticize the so-called interminable meetings, but they are mostly pathetic because they don't have an end time. The meeting is the only way to approach a project / a direction in a collegial way. It must be efficient. Its effectiveness depends on a good agenda, a good round of discussions, but above all it must respect its start and end times.

There is perhaps one case where the end date would be a mistake. It is the date of our death. It is likely that we would experience a great upheaval if each of us knew his or her day of departure from this world.... In the meantime, we would all like to have an end date for the reconstruction of Notre Dame de Paris...