Light Scientists acquires Fontes de Paris: an LED lighting group takes on a heritage street-lighting maker

Light Scientists, the French LED lighting group behind the acquisition

A French group built up since 2019, Light Scientists designs and manufactures LED lighting solutions for industrial, commercial, office, sports and architectural applications, through a set of companies brought together by external growth — AIRIS France, SIGNCOMPLEX France and Speqtris Sport, among others. Privately held, the group was assembled through successive acquisitions — AIRIS in April 2019, SIGNCOMPLEX in July, STOP LED in October, then Alliance LED — following a buy-and-build model that combines complementary lighting expertise. Its published strategy is to pursue this development by strengthening its expertise and skills in the most technical areas of lighting — and street lighting is the front line: the joint acquisition of Fontes de Paris and ACI2B brings in the manufacture of lanterns, lighting columns, brackets and their metal components.

Fontes de Paris, the heritage maker of public street lanterns

Based in the Aube and founded in 1985, Fontes de Paris specialises in manufacturing street-lighting lanterns — both period-style and functional — as well as lighting columns and brackets. The deal pairs it with ACI2B, a sheet-metal fabrication and metalwork company in Haute-Marne that makes, among other things, components for those same lanterns; together, the two companies report published revenue of more than EUR 9 million. What sets it apart is the double official recognition of its know-how: the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant (Living Heritage Company) label, a French state distinction for excellence in craft skills, and the Origine France Garantie certification of its luminaires — a business capable of heritage work, up to the renovation of the lighting of the Cour Carrée of the Louvre in 2024, as well as contemporary design, its KJ LED lantern having won an award at Light + Building 2020. Its integration into the group comes with a published commitment to continuity: preserving French know-how and local production, with all the teams of both companies joining the new group.

Why this acquisition, and why Fontes de Paris as the target

For Light Scientists, the aim was to complete a lighting group's capabilities with something that cannot be improvised: mastery of the object itself. The buy-and-build strategy pursued since 2019 had brought together LED expertise — industrial, office, sports, architectural — but street lighting has its own requirements: the lantern itself, the column, the bracket, the metal component, and the singular blend of style and engineering that towns and cities demand. By acquiring Fontes de Paris and its metal fabricator ACI2B together, the group gains the complete chain — from component to installed lantern — and, in its own published words, strengthens its expertise in the most technical areas of lighting: manufacturing joins technology under one roof.

On the target side, Fontes de Paris offered a profile that can be counted on the fingers of one hand: a business holding the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant label — the French state's recognition of excellence in craft skills, rare in lighting; luminaires certified Origine France Garantie at a time when public procurement rewards local production; references that speak for themselves — up to the Cour Carrée of the Louvre, renovated in 2024; and proof of its modernity, the KJ LED lantern, award-winner at Light + Building 2020: style and engineering in the same hands. “Continuing to light up our cities with excellence and passion”, says the acquirer's announcement: the joint acquisition of the metal fabricator ACI2B, which makes the components for its lanterns, shows an industrial understanding of the deal — you do not buy a heritage business without securing the upstream supply that keeps it running.

Street lighting: where the energy transition meets heritage

This deal sits within the broad shift in French street lighting: local authorities are renovating their lighting stock on a large scale — energy efficiency, lower consumption and light pollution, maintenance of ageing installations — and LED has become the standard of this transition. Historic town centres, however, add a requirement that technology alone cannot meet: respect for heritage, the period-style lantern, street furniture that belongs to the landscape. The industry is therefore reorganising around players capable of both — the photon and the cast metal — and labels of origin and craft skills, from Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant to Origine France Garantie, are once again becoming criteria in public procurement: consolidation rewards those who integrate French manufacturing rather than replace it.

The scope of the deal is domestic, and heritage-driven in the industrial sense: a French group built up through buy-and-build since 2019 brings in two businesses from the Grand Est region — the Aube and Haute-Marne, historic heartlands of Champagne metalworking — with combined published revenue of more than EUR 9 million, and a stated commitment to preserving French know-how and local production, with all teams retained. For the local authorities that are its customers, the deal gives the lantern maker the resources of a lighting group; for the region, it anchors two manufacturing businesses within a national group — and for the industry, it illustrates the French route to the transition: modernising lighting without switching off the heritage that carries it.

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

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. Acquiring a heritage business together with its metal fabricator plays out in four stages — and the rare dual target shaped each of them.