SPC acquires ACE Solutions: the first step towards complete filling and packaging lines

SPC Group, Lyon's precision filling specialist

Founded in 1902 in Caluire, on the edge of Lyon, SPC Group makes high-precision tooling for packaging liquids in demanding environments (dosing pumps and custom filling needles) for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food and biotechnology industries, with recognised expertise in sterile environments. Unlisted, chaired by Frédéric Roques and backed by a shareholder base that includes its employees, the group generates around EUR 12 million in revenue, with a mechanical, electrical and automation design office and a worldwide reputation in its niche. Its published strategy is to become the national champion in supplying complete filling lines for liquid and semi-liquid products to the pharmaceutical industry, and this acquisition is its founding act: the first step in a development that continued with the integration of Tecadis in 2024.

ACE Solutions, the machine builder of the Cosmetic Valley

Based in Évreux, Normandy, at the heart of the Cosmetic Valley, ACE Solutions is a French manufacturer of packaging machinery for filling, capping and labelling, supporting its clients from drafting the specification through to installation and commissioning of the equipment. Its differentiator is the breadth of its range and of the environments it handles: from semi-automatic machines to fully automatic packaging lines, through to special-purpose machines and vision inspection, for aseptic, vacuum or laminar-flow filling, with clean-in-place (CIP), serving clients that include some of the biggest names in fragrance and cosmetics. Founded by its managers Guillaume Dugast and Thomas Lanos, the company saw Frédéric Roques, chairman of SPC Group, take over its management in October 2022, ahead of a merger into the group that has made Évreux its Machines division: a site that has been retained, is active and is recruiting.

Why SPC Group acquired a packaging machinery maker, and why this target

For SPC Group, the issue came down to an industrial trajectory: moving from component to line. For decades the Lyon business has led on the critical part of filling (the dosing pump, the custom needle, precision in sterile environments), but its pharmaceutical and cosmetics customers now buy integrated lines, from unscrambling to final inspection. “A strategic deal combining industrial know-how, innovation and complementary expertise,” as the acquirer's press release put it: by bringing in a manufacturer of complete machines, the group moves up a level in the value chain and lays the first stone of a published objective, to become the national champion in complete filling lines, which the following integrations, Tecadis in 2024 and then Meca Sud, would confirm.

On the target side, ACE Solutions offered the perfect fit: no overlap (a machine builder where the acquirer is a component supplier), a range covering the whole packaging process, from filling to capping and labelling, from semi-automatic to fully automatic lines, and controlled environments up to aseptic and laminar flow, extended by special-purpose machines and vision inspection. Then there was location: Évreux, at the heart of the Cosmetic Valley, France's fragrance and cosmetics cluster, with a customer base including some of the biggest names in the sector. For the target, the combination brought the backing of a group with long-standing pharmaceutical expertise and an international presence, the new scale that was to accelerate its development. Time has proved the equation right: Évreux is now the group's Machines division.

Packaging machinery consolidates through complementary fits

This deal illustrates the reshaping of French packaging machinery. Faced with the large international line integrators, the domestic industrial base (special-purpose machine workshops, often hidden in catch-all classifications) can only meet the needs of pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturers, who want integrated lines, by combining through complementary fits: the critical-component supplier brings in the machine builder, the machine builder gains access to the most demanding environments, and together they offer what neither could offer alone. The sector gains a discreet but real stake in industrial sovereignty: keeping in France the capability to equip its own champions in fragrance, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, as close as possible to their industrial clusters.

With hindsight, the deal is also an exemplary domestic consolidation: a Normandy SME run by two founder-engineers handed on to a Lyon business more than a century old, with employees among its shareholders; the Évreux site not only retained but promoted, as the group's Machines division, active right down to its recruitment; and the founding act of a series documented in this collection: ACE in 2022, Tecadis in 2024, Meca Sud. The national complete-line champion strategy was announced and then delivered, up to the arrival of a regional financial partner to support the next phase. An old-school buy-and-build: patient, industrial and verifiable step by step.

Collaboration Capital's buy-side role in the SPC–ACE Solutions acquisition

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. The founding acquisition of an industrial buy-and-build plays out in four stages, and the world of special-purpose machinery, where every order is a prototype, imposes its own demands on each of them.