Thibaud Droin acquires Climatherm Demets Fernandes: an entrepreneurial HVAC business acquisition

Thibaud Droin, the entrepreneur behind the acquisition

Thibaud Droin is a French entrepreneur and independent buyer who spent several years building and running companies before choosing to invest directly. His project is not that of a group or a fund: it is that of a business leader staking his career on an industrial and services company with long-standing expertise and significant growth potential — the logic of an entrepreneurial acquisition, in which the buyer personally takes charge of the business acquired. His published strategy is one of continuity and development: preserving the skills, teams and culture of the company he has taken over, while giving it the means to identify new growth opportunities.

Climatherm Demets Fernandes: forty-seven years of HVAC engineering

Based in Marcoussis, in the Essonne department south of Paris, according to company records, Climatherm Demets Fernandes — trading as Climatherm Services — is a French HVAC engineering contractor founded in 1979. It covers heating, ventilation, air conditioning and air handling, plumbing and smoke extraction, from preliminary design through to handover. What sets it apart is an integrated chain: an in-house design office combined with teams of specialist technicians able to take on complex projects for commercial and industrial sites that demand a high level of reliability and operational continuity. Its portfolio of projects spans six sectors — from luxury to media, from food and beverage to housing, from healthcare to offices — and its maintenance business is run through ENEXES, the dedicated entity that extends installation work into recurring service contracts. The sale of the business follows an entrepreneurial approach published under the banner of continuity: preserving the fundamentals — technical expertise, high quality standards, closeness to clients — while opening, under the new owner's leadership, a new phase of development.

Why this acquisition, and why this HVAC business

For Thibaud Droin, the challenge was that of every successful entrepreneurial acquisition: finding the company whose foundations deserve a second wind — and committing to it personally. After several years building and running businesses, he chose an industrial and services company with long-standing expertise: a forty-seven-year-old firm with deep sector experience, specialist teams and an established position in markets where technical skill and quality of execution are what set a contractor apart. “Preserving the fundamentals that built Climatherm Services' reputation”, says the buyer's announcement: the acquisition follows a logic of continuity and development — skills preserved, growth pursued.

On the target side, Climatherm Demets Fernandes brought together what gives a contracting business its value: an integrated organisation — the in-house design office and specialist technical teams, the asset that allows it to control a large part of the delivery chain; demanding clients — commercial and industrial sites with high operational continuity, spread across six sectors, a diversity that underpins resilience; recurring revenue — the maintenance business run by ENEXES, which turns each project into a lasting relationship; and culture — service quality and closeness to clients, explicitly named as the core of the handover. For a firm of this profile, an entrepreneurial acquisition offered the most faithful route: an owner-manager personally committed, the fundamentals preserved, and new ambitions for growth.

HVAC engineering at the heart of the building energy transition

This deal sits in a sector driven by structural tailwinds: tighter environmental regulation, the drive for energy efficiency and the modernisation of buildings give HVAC engineering significant growth prospects — heating, ventilation and air conditioning have become the main lever for the energy performance of commercial and industrial buildings. At the same time, the French HVAC sector is still made up largely of owner-managed businesses founded in the 1970s and 1980s, whose leaders are now reaching retirement and planning their succession — and whose value, built on design offices, scarce qualified technicians and loyal clients, is poorly preserved in a piecemeal sale: selling the business as a whole, to a committed buyer, is often the most protective route.

The deal is domestic and regional in scope — the Marcoussis business, in Essonne, carries on under its new owner — and it adds a clear demonstration to our track record: after the acquisition of a Provençal distillery by an individual buyer, the acquisition of an HVAC engineering firm confirms that entrepreneurial succession is a fully fledged segment of the market — neither group consolidation nor a fund deal, but one person's commitment to continuing a life's work. For employees, clients and partners, the published commitment is that the fundamentals will be maintained — technical rigour, closeness, local roots — and for the fabric of technical building-services SMEs, the deal is a reminder that, as the founding generation steps down, there are buyers ready to write the next chapter.

How Collaboration Capital added value as buy-side adviser

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. An entrepreneurial acquisition unfolds in four stages — the same as any acquisition, with one fundamental difference: the buyer is a person, and each stage commits their project as much as their capital.