CMC: Investing for the long term

How do you get new technologies to catch on in a relatively traditional industry? Those that not only help you to produce more efficiently, but also provide other benefits? Considerable challenges at a time when the ‘Green Deal’ in Europe demands ever more attention and shouts for faster results. Within our portfolio of VADO companies, we have a striking example for this. Our Belgian company CMC (Compressor and Machine Controls) provides intelligent solutions for compressors, which can reduce energy consumption by up to 30% and improve uptime. VADO has been a shareholder of CMC since 1999 and is proud of the innovative development that CMC is undergoing. A progressive company that achieves more than just efficiency improvements with its technologically advanced solutions.

Technological advanced solutions
Frank Deschuytere, CEO of CMC, feels responsible for making a substantial contribution to these diverse objectives: “Customers need to change their behaviour. Just like VADO, we feel the responsibility to leave the world a little better for the next generations. Using smart IoT solutions to improve device reliability and reduce CO2 emissions will put us on the right track. Then we can improve both the ecological footprint and the productivity of the company. A real win-win situation.”

VADO: open time frame
At VADO we take the long-term view about how a company can continuously grow in a healthy way. It’s why we don’t work with a fund structure and, consequently, have no clearly defined time frame for the sale of companies. Many of the companies in our portfolio, like CMC, Rols Machineonderdelen or Winterwarm have been with us for 20 years or longer. Investors often work with a fund structure and have a time frame of, say, 5 to 7 years; a different approach that requires a different form of cooperation between investor and company. We enter into long-term relationships with the companies in which we invest, based soundly on trust and mutual respect. Read more in our article: Investing for the long term: what does that mean?