Four acquisitions in less than two years for the ETI Airvance. This specialist in ventilation, indoor air and heat pumps based near Lyon has just acquired the majority of the capital of Mechanical Air Supplies, a British company with 70 employees and 10 million euros in turnover. The amount of the transaction has not been disclosed, the sellers remain in the capital and retain operational functions.
“By completing our SK sales distribution subsidiary, this acquisition positions us third in the sector in Great Britain,” assures Laurent Dolbeau, CEO of Airvance, which is acquiring three points of sale and two tube factories in the London region.
Half of its turnover is international
In 2023, this specialist in the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) sector for housing and commercial premises has already absorbed its Bordeaux counterpart AEIB, the Parisian start-up PandO2, which has developed SaaS software for monitoring indoor air quality, and more recently Air to Trust, a distributor in Denmark. This offensive strategy, financed by equity and through credit lines, has enabled Airvance to increase its export share from 40% to 50% of its turnover since 2022.
Established in fourteen countries, mainly in Europe, the family business from Beynost (Ain) employs 1,900 people, including a thousand in France. It recorded 582 million euros in sales in 2023 from its 25,000 installer customers spread across fifty countries.
“We remain active in the acquisition market in order to increase our market share in residential and commercial air treatment,” explains Laurent Dolbeau. The company targets niche markets, such as professional kitchen hoods that it manufactures in two factories in Carentan (Manche) and Torcy-le-Petit (Seine-Maritime).
Recently, it has accelerated in the digital monitoring of air quality thanks to PandO2. This digital brick already existed within Airvance, engaged in the development of the intelligent building, but Laurent Dolbeau was seduced by the start-up’s platform, which adapts to most existing sensors, and “by its simplicity of operation and its technological advance”, adds the manager, winner of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes entrepreneur prize in 2021 The young Parisian company has already equipped more than 300 schools in Europe.
Airvance was born in February 2020 from the acquisition by the family group France Air of the ventilation and air conditioning branch of the British group SIG PLC, a European player with expertise in the treatment and quality of indoor air in buildings. France Air was founded in Lyon in 1960 by the Dolbeau family. However, its origins date back to 1912 with the creation in Morocco of the Etablissements Hubert Dolbeau et CIE, which became the Compagnie Air Pulsé in Lyon in the 1960s, then France Air. The Dolbeau family, which had at one time opened the capital to an Anglo-Saxon fund, has once again become the sole shareholder of the holding company.
