Building a sealants powerhouse
Den Braven’s commercial transformation.
- Industry: Construction Materials
- Entry: 2010
- Exit: 2016
The company
Den Braven is a leading producer and supplier of high-quality sealants, PU foams and adhesives. It was founded in 1974 and has its headquarters in Oosterhout, the Netherlands. At the time of Egeria’s acquisition, Den Braven was producing over 200 million units annually. The company operated 8 production facilities and 20 sales offices globally. In 2010, Den Braven employed approximately 1,200 people.
Opportunities we identified
Egeria has followed Den Braven, market leader in the sealants market, for circa five years prior to the acquisition. The company was owned and managed by the founding Den Braven family at that time, but had no successor within the family. There were many opportunities for expansion into new product and market combinations, but we also saw upside potential in rationalizing the product and client base that had grown rapidly since its inception.
Facts & Figures
14k 10k
Simplified the product portfolio from 14k to 10k SKUs
€30k 35k
Fewer but larger customers with €35k sales per customer
€295k 335k
Increased productivity from €295k to €335k sales per FTE
Commercial repositioning
Together with the new Den Braven management team, we formulated a strategic plan for the coming years. The main drivers of the plan were:
- Repositioning of Den Braven: from low-cost/high-volume private label producer to a recognized branded ‘powerhouse’ in the industry
- Changing the commercial model: set-up of international account structure with local support of agents and distributors with product marketing and implement a category management approach
- Portfolio rationalization: reducing complexity by implementing a core product assortment
During the next six years the teams of Den Braven and Egeria put significant efforts into transforming the organization from a family-run operation to one with a higher degree of professionalization, with a new executive management structure and better data insights to monitor the underlying business drivers.
Further optimization leading to a successful exit
The production footprint was reorganized to a split between powerhouse, specialty and regional facilities to improve returns from existing production. Non-core production facilities were divested or phased out. Den Braven and Egeria invested significantly in the largest production facility, almost doubling the capacity by implementing a high level of automation and optimizing production streams.
In 2016, Den Braven was sold to Arkema.