Gimv buys into Agrobiothers

The Agrobiothers Group, which is based in Cuisery, France, is one of Europe's leading suppliers of hygiene and care products for pets and pet accessories. With a workforce numbering 250 people, the group has achieved sales bordering on 65 mio euros from marketing 4 000 products in more than 20 countries. 
A purely family-owned enterprise, Agrobiothers is opening up its capital for the first time to an external partner. Gimv is a European investment company with over 30 years' experience of private equity and risk capital and will become the majority shareholder under an owner buyout (OBO). It is listed on Euronext Brussels and currently manages around 1.6 bn euros (including third-party funds) in approximately 50 portfolio companies. Julien Jenoudet, the former majority shareholder in Agrobiothers, retains a significant investment and will remain at the helm of the company. The transaction must first be sanctioned by the French cartel authority. 
With its growth strategy, sophisticated logistics, integration of production plants into key product programmes and targeted acquisitions at home and abroad, Agrobiothers has succeeded in quadrupling its sales in the last 15 years. It expects the involvement of Gimv to stimulate further growth in the European market, which it believes is still fragmented but offers attractive growth prospects, especially with regard to hygiene and care products, as a result of the development of European licensing regulations. 

Gimv operates in four European countries and has extensive experience of the consumer goods sector as well as of buy-and-build at international level. "I welcome the involvement of Gimv. The new shareholder will support us in the structuring of our marketing and distribution approach in future and enable us to accelerate our growth in the promising European market. The Gimv team is ready to assist us in our growth project and has quickly got to grips with the challenges confronting Agrobiothers in its development," said Julien Jenoudet, president of Agrobiothers. Guillaume Bardy, principal of Gimv's Connected Consumer platform, is also confident about Gimv's investment in Agrobiothers: "Thanks to its strengths, Agrobiothers is ideally poised to become an integrated player in the multichannel distribution…