CORPORATE

The Comelit Group acquires the Spanish Ingenium!

The Comelit group acquires Spain’s Ingenium Sa to boost home and building automation.

 

Thanks to the deal, the Italian group acquires a new strategic competence centre and is aiming for the €300 million target by 2030.

 

May 3, 2024 – Comelit takes another significant step in its growth process toward its ambitious goal of exceeding 300 million euros in sales by 2030. In fact, on April 29, the 98 percent acquisition of Ingenium Sa, a Spanish company based in Oviedo, Asturias, that designs and manufactures advanced home and building automation technologies, was signed.

An entrepreneurial reality characterised by consolidated technological know-how and a marked propensity for technological research and development: recognised as an “innovative company” by the Spanish Ministry of the Economy, and the first company in Spain to be certified ISO 9001 in the Research, Development and Innovation (I+D+I) sector, Ingenium Sa has developed a wide range of devices in the home automation sector (using the proprietary BUSing® communication protocol, open and royalty-free for use) and in building automation (using in this case the KNX communication protocol, the open world standard for this type of application). Ingenium’s portfolio offers multiple systems (including wireless) for the automation of large buildings (such as hotels, public facilities, business centres and companies) and private homes, with control devices for lighting, windows, air conditioning in all types of systems, the creation of customisable scenarios, consumption management and alarm control, through monitors, multi-power panels and, remotely, through apps.

«‘With this acquisition,’- says Comelit CEO Edoardo Barzasi, – the Comelit group chooses to boost its offering in two key areas for security, as well as comfort and energy saving: home and building automation. We have identified in Ingenium Sa a centre of competence of absolute technological level to be integrated into our Group, capable of developing and designing solutions characterised by high and constant innovation, which can be fully integrated with our other systems.»

The Comelit group – headquartered in Rovetta (Bergamo), with 9 branches worldwide, more than 1,000 employees and a consolidated turnover in 2023 of 180 million Euros – is thus continuing its path of continuous growth, focusing on skills development:

«The acquisition of Ingenium Sa follows on from those of Immotec (France) and PAC (UK) in access control, Teletek Electronics (Bulgaria) in fire protection systems, and Blueprint (Italy) in EVAC systems), and the continued investment in R&D in our Bergamo and Tunis centres, which account for around 8.5% of turnover. – continues Barzasi – The operation will allow us to enter a new market segment, building automation, and to strengthen and innovate our offer in home automation, where we are already present with our SimpleHome system in all the international markets where we operate.»

Satisfaction expressed by Ana Perez Otero and Pedro Coto Pazos, electronic engineers and co-founders of Ingenium SA in 1989, currently at the helm of the company (35 employees, a turnover of 3 million euros in 2023, with a predominant commercial presence in Spain, which accounts for 60 percent of its market, and the remaining 40 percent distributed across 35 other countries):

 

«We have found in Comelit an ideal partner for growth: it is a family-owned company, but with a strong and consolidated presence in markets all over the world, which has an important history and a far-reaching strategic vision, an extremely articulated product range and a widespread and capillary sales organisation. Becoming part of such a group opens up extraordinary development opportunities for Ingenium’. ‘For our part,’ they continue, “we can provide the group with cutting-edge technological know-how in the home and building automation sectors, which are constantly and rapidly developing, and whose strengths lie in the speed of communication between devices, integration with other security systems, energy efficiency, and ease and simplicity of installation, programming, and control.»