Frimex

Through Frimex Installation and Frimex Service, the company designs, engineers, installs, and maintains refrigeration and electrical installations for the major retailers and the hospitality sector. The company had longstanding relationships with the largest supermarket chains and has an exclusive partnership with a major food retailer in The Netherlands to provide additional services such as the sourcing, prefabrication and logistics of lighting and refrigeration materials. Because of Frimex’s prefabrication skills, the company is able to renovate a supermarket within a week thereby keeping the downtime c.q. enovation cost for retailers low.

VE Partners invested in Frimex because of the positive outlook for food retail being far less cyclical than many other industries driven by 1) increasing demand for fresh products, 2) shortening store reformatting cycles and 3) increasing number of Dutch retail stores. In addition, Frimex is the market leader and has a strong management team, well-trained own workforce of cooling experts, and operational capabilities such as its ‘prefab’ activities. As such, Frimex is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the growing demand for its services.

Management, supported by VE Partners, has realized significant sales growth by 1) expanding business with existing food retailers, 2) increasing business with new food and non-food retailers, and 3) expanding business into Belgium. In parallel, the overall margin was improved through stricter contract management and cost control.