Acquisition of entrepreneurship

“We don’t do any manufacturing ourselves, but we do have our own factory where we refine and adapt the products according to our customers’ needs. We also provide service and maintenance. For the time being, we’re primarily working with customers in Sweden, but we recently started up operations in Norway as well. The best possible scenario is when we can get involved early in a customer’s R&D process. We can then use our extensive experience and application knowledge to help them arrive at the best solution. We make a valuable contribution in this way, by helping shorten the customer’s development process and make it more efficient. Our biggest strengths are thus our knowledge, excellent service and short lead times,” says Mikael.

Strong company culture

“We have a very strong culture, which we’ve built up over the years. Our entrepreneurial mindset permeates everything we do. All of our very talented employees apply that approach and we have highly competent personal leadership as well. These are our core qualities and when we met Indutrade, it soon became very clear that it was a perfect match. Our values fit like a glove with Indutrade’s. As a niched, profitable technology company, we met Indutrade's other investment criteria as well,” he says.

“Long-term sustainability is another important component of our company culture. We have ISO certification for environmental management and quality management. And, we recently obtained ISO certification for occupational health and safety. It means that we work systematically with the work environment for our employees. In our future sustainability pursuits, we will benefit from the support that Indutrade offers all of the companies in the Group via tools for working with sustainability processes, for example,” he says.

Smooth acquisition process

“At all times, Mats and I are putting our effort into building a stable company. Since the very start, our focus has been on profitability and stability. Along the way, we’ve weathered periods of economic growth and decline. To continue growing as we wanted to, however, we realized that we needed a long-term, stable owner with financial strength. Indutrade, has offered us just that,” says Mikael.

"To continue growing as we wanted to, however, we realized that we needed a long-term, stable owner with financial strength. Indutrade, has offered us just that."

“The acquisition process, too, was incredibly smooth and transparent. We wondered, of course, about Indutrade’s approach to governance and how that worked, given that there are more than 200 companies in the Group. Would we really get the support we needed? The answer to that was definitely yes! Indutrade is very open and receptive to our needs. We were encouraged to contact others within the Group and hear from them directly how things worked in practice. The due diligence process went smoothly too, thanks to the fact that we have well-functioning structures and systems here at Acumo,” he says.

Business as usual

“Thanks to Indutrade’s decentralized governance model, we can run our daily operations exactly as before. Now, however, we have the financial resources we need to grow, both organically and via acquisitions. We’ve also added expertise to our Board of Directors and the large network that we now have access to opens up new business opportunities. It also makes more avenues available to us for recruiting new talent. Acumo is, after all, a relatively small company. As such, offering a broad scope of career opportunities has been a challenge for us. But now, as part of a larger Group, we have become a much more attractive employer,” says Mikael.

“The entrepreneurial spirit that has been so important to both Mats and me, and which has characterized Acumo from the start, will continue to be emphasized. With Indutrade as our owner, we get the best of both worlds. We can retain the spirit of a small company and simultaneously draw benefits from the strength and expertise of a larger Group,” concludes Mikael.