In the mid-market infrastructure market, scaling a business into a fully functional institutional platform and capturing the associated scale premium are powerful drivers of value at exit. Among value-add approaches, buy-and-build can unlock significant growth. Over the past decade, InfraVia has consistently scaled platforms through a balanced combination of organic growth (CAPEX) and acquisition-led expansion (M&A).
The investment teams have completed over 100 buy-and-build transactions, ranging from building platforms from scratch to accelerating existing small platforms through repetitive bolt-on acquisitions or pursuing strategic acquisitions that open up new markets or verticals.
In this article, we spoke with Olivier Laroche, Partner, and Matthieu Cornu, Director, Asset Management, at InfraVia Capital Partners, about the various approaches to executing buy-and-build strategies to drive long-term value creation.
In certain infrastructure sectors, you’ve chosen to build platforms from scratch rather than acquiring established players. What drives this decision, and what advantages does this approach offer?
Olivier Laroche (OL), Partner: “Building a platform from scratch, by consolidating smaller assets into a larger, more competitive entity, can be a highly effective way to create accretive value. In certain sectors, acquiring an incumbent player may be prohibitively expensive or simply not feasible due to a lack of suitable targets. In those cases, starting from the ground up becomes a strategic entry point into high-potential markets, provided there is a clear path to establishing a credible, scalable platform that can compete with established players.”
Could you take us through a real-life example of building a platform from inception to exit?
OL: “InfraVia has a strong track record of building new platforms from scratch. Let’s look at Alkion Terminals, launched in 2016 with a single facility in Amsterdam. In just five years, InfraVia transformed Alkion into a leading player in the Western European petrochemical storage market, expanding its footprint to 10 terminals across five countries. The company scaled from a team of 5 to more than 300 employees, successfully building a cohesive and integrated corporate platform. By 2022, Alkion had established itself as a key player in the European storage landscape, with a presence in the growing biofuel market, and was successfully sold to a strategic industrial buyer.”
Read the full ‘Thought Leadership’ article at the link below
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