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The French specialist in performance optimization, EPSA, has recently become the new majority shareholder of Kronos Group and of the major activities belonging to Kloepfel Group.
By joining forces, EPSA, Kloepfel and Kronos Group have become the leading pan-European procurement service provider, complementing and completing each group’s strengths and expertise in business transformation, finance, project management, tax and innovation.
This new alliance is now capable of providing global support and end to end tailor-made solutions to boost the competitiveness of European companies.
A major challenge currently facing economic players is their profitability, their solvency, the shortage of raw materials and the intensification in the disturbance of supply chains, which is creating huge disruptions in all sectors of activity, from IT to the pharmaceutical industry, including to the automobile and construction sectors. This structural crisis is forcing companies to reorganize or even restructure and find new levers to deal with this unprecedented situation.
Thus, in addition to a vaster geographical reach, the synergies made possible by bringing together these three groups offer a unique combination of complementary expertise, from business strategy, finance and organizations’ transformation, to purchasing and supply chain optimization, also including the re-engineering of production means and costs, complex projects management and the deployment of digital solutions.
Complementary Expertise to Help Businesses Take on New Challenges and Drive Bottom Line Results
The four German activities belonging to Kloepfel Group are the purchasing consultancy Kloepfel Consulting, the 4th party logistics company Kloepfel 4PL, the procurement outsourcing specialist Kloepfel Services and the product cost optimizer Kloepfel Engineering. Marc Kloepfel and Duran Sarikaya will remain managing directors at the helm of these four companies.
With over 200 employees and annual sales of approximately 25 million euros, these companies are amongst the leading purchasing service providers in the DACH region, Eastern Europe and the Netherlands. In 2021, Kloepfel Consulting received the prestigious public award “Best Consultants” from the German business magazine Brand eins for the sixth time in a row.
Kronos Group is mainly active in Europe and operates in the fields of procurement consultancy, finance, transformation and project management. With over 140 experts, Kronos Group is a rapidly growing European company, generating over 14 million euros in turnover per year. The group has received various prestigious honors recognizing their exceptional management and development, including the “Europe’s 1000 fastest growing companies” awarded by the Financial Times in 2018 and 2019. The company will continue to be headed by its two founders, Catherine Van Wonterghem and Benoit Graas.
EPSA Group’s 1,300 employees serve 4,500 active customers in 30 countries. The company boasts uninterrupted growth over the last five years, reaching an annual net sales of €170 million in 2021. EPSA Group, a proven and respected actor in the creation and delivery of lasting performance, has managed to save over 3.6 billion euros for its customers since 2001. EPSA focuses on: Organization Transformation, Supply Chain Performance, Tax and Social Charges Optimization, Innovation Financing, Energy Consumption Optimization, Procurement Consultancy and Outsourcing through EPSA Marketplace.
New Levers to Drive Business Performance with a Unique European Player
Matthieu Gufflet, Founding President of EPSA, states: “This alliance reinforces EPSA’s position across Europe. Together with Kloepfel and Kronos Group, we’ve become one of the largest pan-European Business Transformation & Performance Advisory groups with additional locations in America and Asia. The recent sanitary crisis has clearly showed that companies are looking for new levers of performance optimization on a global level. In the post-crisis world, business models, organizations and supply chains will need to be reinvented: our ambition is to work hand in hand with our customers to drive the necessary transformation needed in order to tackle the challenges that lay ahead”.
Marc Kloepfel, CEO of the Kloepfel Group, explains: “We decided to take this important step in order to consolidate our position on the global market, to bring fresh know-how on board and to be able to develop the entire group much faster. We are looking forward to working with EPSA and are absolutely sure that we have found the right partner for our further development. Our alliance offers companies every opportunity to take their purchasing to a new level as a driver of returns and innovation in global competition”.
Catherine Van Wonterghem & Benoit Graas, Founders of Kronos Group: “In less than ten years, we’ve grown to become the leaders in our market thanks to the development of a talented team of consultants and experts. Today, we are eager to accelerate our journey towards European leadership in our field of expertise. This new and strong alliance allows us to join a family that shares the same vision and entrepreneurial culture while keeping a high autonomy. We are extremely motivated to be part of this new adventure together with all our colleagues across Europe”.