The PHI fund invests 1.5 million a year in Videcart
PHI Industrial Acquisitions operates with an innovative and entrepreneurial business model consisting of investing in companies in special situations.
Videcart, a cardboard packaging manufacturer, has refocused its business and managed to turn it around. He has done it in a year and a half, the time that the PHI Industrial fund, which bought Videcart and the rest of the companies of the San Andrés paper group from the North American multinational Newark, has been the owner of the fund a year and a half ago.
This is what Jorge Beschinsky, general director of Videcart, explains, a manager who came from the owner and who joined San Andrés, in Villava, in 2013. Since February 2014, he has also held the general management position of Videcart. Beschinsky, as a representative of the fund, has immersed himself fully in the management of the companies “because as a fund we get involved with the investee and we get it started.”
The manager hopes to abandon last year’s losses and reach black numbers this year. And that while maintaining the same turnover, that of 31.5 million euros. To do this, the company, with 95 workers, has reoriented and selected its client portfolio. “We had large and small consumers. And the plant was not prepared for reduced production. We sold with more features than necessary to certain customers. “We have adapted the offer to what the client needs and looked for clients who demand what we do well,” added the manager.
Objective, France
Furthermore, this company, which already exports 60% of its turnover, has set the goal of selling in France, where they have been present for years, as well as in Spain. 80% of its sales abroad are directed to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa; 15% to Central America, and 5% to the US and Canada.
Beschinsky is aware of the bad image that investment funds that are made with losing companies have and defends that not all of them are the same. “We are not a ‘vulture’ fund. Ours is interested in operations where we see the possibility of recovering the company and making it profitable, regardless of the sector. We are a good ‘partner’ for multinationals so that they divest because they trust us. And Newark had a lot of room for improvement,” he added. Yes, he recognized that his presence in his investees has no intention of permanence and that they buy to, over time, sell. “But not to do it in the short term: We win when the company gains value, improving its productivity, its strategy…”, he commented. “We are a group of professionals, with participation in the business. We are clear that there are people who have put money in and we have to maximize it, but honestly. We get involved in management, we get involved with the company and we get it started.” This task is not without problems, he explained, “like having to change many paradigms, many practices, and we have to earn the trust of many people.”
With this intention, PHI Industrial maintains a continuous investment policy in its investees. In the last twelve months it has invested 1.5 million euros in Videcart, allocated to machinery, painting, conditioning of the facilities… “And we will maintain these levels every year,” added the manager.
In the group’s other Navarra plant, the San Andrés paper mill, in Villava, the investment has been 1.2 million euros in the last twelve months, a figure that will be repeated in the coming years. So in the last year the group has invested almost three million euros in the Navarrese plants. The Villava plant, which largely supplies raw materials to Videcart, has 140 workers and a turnover of 40 million euros.
