Cogem acquires TD eau: its point-of-use water treatment network reaches Provence

COGEM, the consolidator of point-of-use water treatment

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 actually used, in homes as well as in businesses and public buildings. A private company, it builds its model on long-term service: sale, installation and then maintenance, with control over every stage of the equipment life cycle and lasting customer relationships. Its published strategy is to build a territorial network by integrating specialist regional players — a series of acquisitions carried out in 2024 across several French regions, from Gradignan to Reims and Arles, in which the Gémenos deal is the Provence milestone.

TD eau, water treatment expertise — the Gémenos business

TD eau has been a water treatment specialist for more than twenty years, focused on point of use — the same trade as the acquirer — serving homes, multi-occupancy buildings, commercial premises and industry, with a range covering filtration, water softening, drinking water treatment, reverse osmosis, iron removal, nitrate removal and Legionella control. Its model combines design and engineering, installation and maintenance, built on the two economic pillars of the trade: maintenance contracts, which protect customers' investment and generate recurring revenue, and equipment rental, which covers equipment, servicing and warranty in a single monthly fee. The deal concerns specifically the business assets (fonds de commerce) of its Gémenos site in the Bouches-du-Rhône — the deed, registered in spring 2024, transfers the business, its customer base and its local footprint to an acquirer in the same trade, with continuity of service to customers as the very logic of the structure.

Why this acquisition, and why this target

For COGEM, the challenge is that of any local service business: you cannot serve a territory without being there. Point-of-use water treatment lives on maintenance rounds, fast call-outs and local recommendations — so a catchment area is better bought than built, and it is bought in its purest form: the business assets, meaning the customer base, the maintenance contracts and the goodwill, without the liabilities of a company. "To progressively strengthen its territorial network and its service offering", says the group's communication: after Gradignan in the south-west, Reims and Arles, the acquisition of the Gémenos business sets the Bouches-du-Rhône milestone — the Aubagne–Aix–Marseille arc — in a 2024 series that, business by business, is building national coverage of the same trade.

On the target side, TD eau's Gémenos business offered exactly what the investment thesis was looking for: the same trade — point of use, down to the vocabulary; more than twenty years of expertise covering the seven families of treatment solutions, from water softening to Legionella control; a twofold economic base of recurring maintenance contracts and equipment rental — revenues that transfer with the business and can be measured before they are bought; and a prime location: Gémenos, at the junction of Aubagne, Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, in a region where hard water makes treatment a long-term equipment need. The fact that acquirer and target share the same trade did the rest: for the business's customers, the new owner speaks the same technical language — continuity of service as a given.

Local point-of-use water treatment is consolidating, one business at a time

This deal illustrates a discreet but methodical consolidation: point-of-use water treatment — softeners, filtration, reverse osmosis — is driven by structural trends, from growing awareness of water quality and hard mains water in many regions to the health requirements of commercial and multi-occupancy buildings, including Legionella prevention; yet it is still served by a fragmented base of regional installers, where value lies in portfolios of maintenance contracts and installed customer bases. Consolidation advances one unit at a time: through purchases of business assets, the instrument that transfers the customer base, the contracts and the goodwill without taking over the company — the acquisition closest to the ground that business law offers.

The deal's reach is domestic and modest in size, but structuring in its method: from the Lyon metropolitan area to the Bouches-du-Rhône, a specialist founded in 1996 adds the Provence milestone to a published 2024 series — Gradignan, Reims, Arles — that is gradually building a national network in the same trade. For the customers of the Gémenos business, private households and professionals alike across the Aubagne–Aix–Marseille arc, the deal is first and foremost a promise of continuity: the same service, the same equipment maintained, a new owner from the same trade — and for the market, proof that national consolidation of point-of-use water treatment can be built quietly, one maintenance contract at a time.

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

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. Acquiring the business assets of a local service company plays out in four stages — and in point-of-use water treatment, where the assets are customers and contracts, each stage has its own yardstick.