M&A · Completed deal · Buy-side advisory

Cogem acquires Hydr'eau Plus: a water treatment consolidator puts down roots in Arles

In this water treatment acquisition, COGEM, the point-of-use water treatment specialist based in the Lyon metropolitan area, acquired the business and goodwill of Hydr'eau Plus, the Arles-based firm established in 2006. It was a deal of rare transparency: a published price of EUR 580k covering the customer base, maintenance contracts and goodwill, with transfer of possession on 1 October 2024. It marks the Camargue milestone in a series that is building a national network, one business at a time.

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1996

Year the acquirer was founded

2006

Year the target was founded in Arles

EUR 580k

Published price of the business: customer base, contracts and goodwill

2024

Transfer of possession on 1 October

The acquirer

COGEM, the point-of-use water treatment consolidator

Founded in 1996 and based in Vaulx-en-Velin, in the Lyon metropolitan area, COGEM is a French company specialising in the sale, installation and maintenance of point-of-use water treatment solutions — water purified where it is consumed, in homes as well as in businesses and public bodies. A privately held company, it builds its model on long-term support: sale, installation and then maintenance, managing every stage of the equipment life cycle and maintaining lasting customer relationships. Its published strategy is to build territorial coverage by integrating specialist regional players — a national network built step by step by integrating companies and businesses with local know-how and an established customer base. Its 2024 series runs from Gradignan to Reims and Gémenos, up to the Arles milestone of this deal.

The target's core know-how: supporting customers from choosing the solution to operating the installations — the relationship that lasts

CG COGEM Point-of-use water treatment — Vaulx-en-Velin, Lyon metropolitan area (1996) cogem.fr

H+ Hydr'eau Plus Water treatment — Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône (2006) · business integrated into COGEM cogem.fr — Arles

The seller

Hydr'eau Plus, the Arles specialist in long-term water treatment support

Founded in 2006 and based in Arles, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, Hydr'eau Plus supports its customers in the sale, installation and maintenance of point-of-use water treatment equipment — the same trade as the acquirer, right down to the wording. Its distinguishing feature is the breadth of its support — advice, technical assistance, monitoring and operation of installations — which over nearly two decades built the asset the deal places a value on: an established local customer base and a portfolio of maintenance contracts developed over the years. The transfer took the most legible form in the trade: the sale of the business (fonds de commerce) — customer base, maintenance contracts and goodwill — for a published price of EUR 580k, with transfer of possession on 1 October 2024. The Arles operation continues to serve its customers within a group in the same line of business.

The deal rationale

Why this water treatment acquisition, and why this target

For COGEM, the aim is the methodical pursuit of a plan: building a national point-of-use water treatment network by relying, territory by territory, on established local firms rather than opening branches from scratch. “Relying on recognised local players to accelerate development,” as the acquirer's press release puts it. After Gradignan in the south-west, Reims and the Gémenos business, the acquisition of Hydr'eau Plus consolidates the group's presence in Arles and in the south of France — a local customer base, recurring maintenance contracts and eighteen years of local roots joining a group that masters the same skills, from choosing the solution to maintaining it.

The strategic rationale: the published composition of the business — customer base, contracts and goodwill — as a breakdown of its value

On the target side, Hydr'eau Plus offered exactly the profile the strategy was looking for: the same trade — point of use, sale, installation, maintenance; depth of support — from advice to operating installations, the service that builds loyalty; and above all a measurable asset: a local customer base established since 2006 and a portfolio of maintenance contracts, the recurring revenue that is counted before it is bought. The deal's transparency speaks to its maturity: the price of the business — EUR 580k — and its composition — customer base, contracts, goodwill — were published by the acquirer itself, with the transfer of possession dated 1 October 2024. It is an exemplary business transfer in its clarity, in which every term of the transfer is public.

The macroeconomic backdrop

Water treatment is consolidating — and its market is coming into the open

This deal confirms the methodical consolidation of local water treatment — a market driven by concern for water quality, hard water in supply networks and health requirements, and served by a fabric of regional players whose value lies in their installed customer bases and recurring maintenance contracts. It also illustrates a rarer trait: transparency. By publishing the price of the business and its composition, the acquirer gives the market for small business sales what it lacks most — public benchmarks. Every potential seller in the trade can position their own business, customer base and contracts against a documented transaction, and consolidation gains in fluidity what opacity usually costs it in mistrust.

The deal's scope is domestic and serial: from the Lyon metropolitan area to the Bouches-du-Rhône, the consolidator founded in 1996 adds the Arles milestone — eighteen years of local presence — to a 2024 series running from Gradignan to Reims and Gémenos, building a national network in the same trade, one business at a time. For customers in Arles, households and businesses alike, continuity is the very logic of the structure: maintenance contracts continue with a group that does exactly the same work, with greater resources. And for regional installers, the deal shows a clear route to business succession, dated and priced publicly, on exactly the scale of their own firms.

Serial consolidation: the Arles milestone joins Gradignan, Reims and Gémenos on the network map

Our advisory role

Collaboration Capital's added value as buy-side adviser

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. A serial acquisition of businesses plays out in four stages — and when the acquirer is consolidating an entire trade, each deal has to stand on its own while also serving the overall plan.

Understanding the mandate

Scoping serial external growth differs from scoping a one-off acquisition: the trade's channel — local recommendation, the installed base, the maintenance contract that brings the technician back — stays the same, but the thesis becomes a map. Each territory in the plan calls for its own target: a recognised local player in exactly the same trade, whose customer base and contracts can be measured — and whose location completes the network without overlapping it. For the Bouches-du-Rhône milestone, the brief called for a long-established presence in the Arles catchment area, between the Camargue, the Alpilles and the Rhône corridor.

Sourcing and assessing targets

Valuing a water treatment business means breaking down its value the way the deed of sale will name it: the customer base — its size, its loyalty, its split between households and businesses; the maintenance contracts — their number, their age, their renewal rate, the recurring revenue that transfers with the business; and the goodwill — local reputation, roots, visibility. Then come the trade's own filters: depth of support, from advice to operating installations — what builds loyalty; technical compatibility of the installed bases; and track record — here eighteen years of presence in Arles, the asset that the price, once made public, came to recognise.

Off-market channel

Off-market sourcing

Collaboration Capital's technological edge lies in its method for identifying targets: semantic clustering and machine-learning algorithms rather than sector and administrative classifications. Official activity codes put companies into boxes that cannot answer an acquirer's overall objective — they ignore the actual activity, the distribution model, the customer profile and the business model. Semantic analysis, by contrast, reads what companies actually do and maps those that match the acquisition thesis in all its dimensions, including — and above all — those that are not for sale. For a serial consolidation, it is the mapping tool par excellence: territory by territory, within the archipelago of installers that the classifications lump together with plumbers, it singles out the recognised local player with recurring contracts — the milestone missing from the network.

On-market channel

On-market sourcing

The same infrastructure applies to the visible market: the technology extracts the acquisitions and disposals completed in the client's target sector — and above all, it identifies the dealmakers who led them: lawyers, auditors, financing banks and investment funds, assessing each one's level of specialisation in the sector concerned.

Collaboration Capital thus identifies the dealmakers genuinely active in the target sector, finds their professional contact details — emails and phone numbers — and gets in touch to present the client's acquisition project. This is how the on-market channel is fed: it gives the client access to the sales circulating on the market, when they circulate, through those who circulate them — an active channel for local businesses, whose sales pass through local networks and specialist listings as much as through intermediaries.

Together, these two channels raise the level of the sourcing game: Collaboration Capital's technology infrastructure becomes a genuine game changer for acquisition projects. It is aimed at ambitious companies that want to base their external growth on this high-level infrastructure.

III

Direct approach and introductions

Approaching the owner of an eighteen-year-old local firm means working with the personal relationship that underpins its customer base — and, in a serial consolidation, with an argument that one-off acquisitions lack: precedent. The acquirer's published series — Gradignan, Reims, Gémenos — shows that integrating local firms is its core know-how, that the contracts taken over are honoured and that closeness to customers is preserved. Selling the business gives the seller flexibility — selling the activity without necessarily selling the company — and the shared trade does the rest: a buyer who speaks the same technical language, from system sizing to operating installations.

Negotiation through to completion

The structuring followed the grammar of a business transfer, taken here to its most legible form: defining the scope of what was sold — customer base, maintenance contracts and their transferability, goodwill; auditing recurrence — the age of the portfolio, its renewal rate, the spread of the customer base; setting a price reflecting this composition — EUR 580k, made public by the acquirer along with the detail of what it covers; and sequencing the transfer — possession taken on 1 October 2024, the date that organises the switchover of contracts, service visits and the customer relationship. Continuity of service was treated as the core clause of the deal: the same trade on both sides, with support continuing without interruption.

The deal at a glance

Acquirer: COGEM — Vaulx-en-Velin, Lyon metropolitan area · founded in 1996 · point-of-use water treatment
Target: Hydr'eau Plus — Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) · founded in 2006
Target's business: Sale, installation and maintenance of water treatment equipment · advice, technical assistance, monitoring and operation of installations
Type of deal: Sale of the business (fonds de commerce) — customer base, maintenance contracts and goodwill · published price of EUR 580k · transfer of possession on 1 October 2024
Year: 2024
Firm's role: Buy-side advisory

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Sommaire

The acquirer: COGEM
The seller: Hydr'eau Plus
Deal rationale and target
The macroeconomic backdrop
Our advisory added value

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