AE Service acquires Efiter: bringing custom transformer manufacturing in-house

AE Service, the Loire-based electronic components specialist

Based in La Ricamarie, in the Loire department on the outskirts of Saint-Étienne, AE Service — Achat Électronique Service — is a French company specialising in the manufacture, distribution and storage of electronic components for manufacturers that design equipment. Backed by the holding company AE Groupe and privately held, the company covers six product families — power, convection, connectors, human-machine interface, lighting and electromechanical components — with certified commitments: a CSR programme, ISO standards and membership of Bpifrance's Coq Vert community. Its strategy: to move from trading to its own brand by adding manufacturing capabilities, and to expand internationally — the acquisition of Efiter, which becomes one of its two brands alongside SLCE, is the founding step.

HR Diemen-Efiter, Spanish engineering in custom transformers

A Spanish manufacturer with more than forty years of experience, HR Diemen-Efiter designs and produces custom transformers and inductors — encapsulated, toroidal, switch-mode and safety transformers, wound inductors and EI-core units — for demanding markets: medical, lighting, audio, industry, telecommunications, lifts, UPS systems and solar energy. What sets it apart is an integrated model that is rare for a team of twelve: a design office and production based in Spain, R&D specialising in high voltage and coils, and certifications issued by numerous bodies — the company develops its products in close collaboration with its customers. The deal preserves this model: production and the design office remain in Spain, and Efiter becomes an in-house brand of the acquiring group, which now presents it alongside SLCE in its range.

What the press said

The deal was announced on 16 September 2024 by the acquirer, in French and in English, and then documented through the integration of the brand into its range. The two key publications:

Why this acquisition, and why this target

For AE Service, the issue was vertical integration: a component distributor-manufacturer that, like the whole industry, had been through the shortages and supply tensions of recent years secures its upstream supply by taking over a European manufacturer — rather than depending on distant sourcing for components as critical as transformers. The deal achieves three things at once: it strengthens the supply chain, gives the group its own industrial brand and launches its internationalisation. “This decision represents a major step for AE Service,” the acquirer wrote in its official announcement — explicitly linking it to its aim of developing its activities internationally and strengthening its presence in global markets.

On the target side, HR Diemen-Efiter offered a profile the European market rarely produces: forty years of custom transformer engineering concentrated in a team of twelve, with an integrated design office and production in Spain — a craft business in size, an industrial one in its certifications and the breadth of its range. Its value lies in the custom model: every component designed with a customer sits inside a piece of equipment for years — medical, solar energy or lift manufacturers do not change a qualified supplier lightly. For the acquirer, this installed base of designs and this co-development capability were worth more than an anonymous factory; for the target, joining a group with a French sales force and two established brands opens up outlets that twelve people could not prospect on their own.

Reindustrialising the electronic components supply chain

This deal reflects a deep-seated trend in the European electronics industry: after the component shortages of the post-Covid period, distributors and equipment manufacturers are reorganising their supply chains around nearby production capacity — nearshoring — and suppliers they can qualify, particularly for magnetic components, whose custom manufacture resists Asian standardisation. Public policy supports the trend, from European electronics sovereignty to French schemes for greening industry; and for distributors, integrating manufacturers is becoming the way to turn a volume business into a value business.

The deal is also the story of a close-to-home European business transfer: a forty-year-old Spanish SME, too small to go international on its own, joins a French group that preserves its model — production and the design office stay in Spain, the team continues its co-development work, and the brand, far from disappearing, becomes one of the acquirer's two in-house brands. Winding and high-voltage skills remain where they are, while the French sales force opens new markets for them: an intra-European cross-border consolidation at SME scale, of the kind the industry will produce more of.

Collaboration Capital's added value on this buy-side mandate

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. A cross-border vertical integration acquisition plays out in four stages — and the size of the target, a twelve-person engineering team, demands meticulous precision at each of them.