Big Hitter – ROBUR CEO Jan-Jörg Müller-Seiler

It’s hard to image that a company which sprang up from an idea in 2015 could, a mere six years later, become one of the world’s biggest industrial services providers globally, but German company ROBUR has done just that.

The company was seeded from a desire to redefine high-quality industrial services in a changing market environment. ROBUR has developed a finance and leadership model that is founded in partnership and entrepreneurialism. With almost 3,000 employees across 26 member companies, the company extends across wind, water, energy, industrial, and process industries. ROBUR partners with customers such as Siemens and GE, creating holistic solutions from planning through to implementation in the areas of installation, maintenance, relocation, and decommissioning.

Today, CEO Jan-Jörg Müller-Seiler talks from his Munich office with all the confident dynamism of someone who has been leading this company for decades, rather than the modest four years he’s been at the helm of ROBUR.

“The company was founded by three entrepreneurs – I started as a fourth founder in 2017. We wanted to create an industrial service company based in Germany but then expand internationally, delivering the kind of European service standard that’s demanded by our international customers,” he explains.

And expand the company has. Since purchasing its first three companies in 2017, ROBUR is now 26 companies-strong with a turnover of approximately 300 million euros, operating across energy, wind, industrial, process, and water verticals. ROBUR’s companies are geographically spread from Spain to Latin America, the US to Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa.

Jan-Jörg took up the CEO role in 2019. Born in Spain, his international career includes a 15-year stint with LURGI an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) in the Germany and UK before Jan-Jörg became executive VP of Intertek PLC, a UK-listed third biggest international quality assurance provider in the tech sector. Four years ago, ROBUR’s founder and then-CEO and chairman Daniel Beringer came knocking. Jan-Jörg says:

“Daniel wanted to give small to medium enterprises the possibility to grow further, so we created this industrial service idea. We started to acquire small to medium enterprises to form a bigger enterprise. And we have done that quite successfully.”

ROBUR is now divided into three divisions, Energy, Process, and Digital. They are managed by business units that sit beneath these teams. It’s a model where small businesses, companies, and divisions work together to create a single, unified, industrial services offering, and is a key point of difference for the ROBUR model. Partnerships are at its heart. “What differentiates us from our competitors is partnership thinking,” Jan-Jörg explains. “A lot of companies claim that they have the same philosophy but having worked for different companies, I have seen where working as a partnership is great when everything is working well, but when you hit a crisis, you suddenly realise what your partnership isn’t.”

Certainly, the last two years have been a crisis, so how has the partnership model performed over this time? “COVID has done a lot of challenging things, disrupted a lot of things. But one thing that it hasn’t done is take our partnerships away. On the contrary, it has brought us together much stronger. We realised that as a partner-driven group we can be more successful together than continuing by ourselves.”

Jan-Jörg is clearly proud of this, so too how ROBUR has navigated the pandemic: “We have sailed through better than average because we are so diversified. The digital business has performed well during COVID, the process business, however, has not done quite so well. A lot of projects were delayed over the last year. And the wind business has done well because we are diversified internationally.”

Jan-Jörg is quick to add that it is skills and people, rather than the machinery, that’s behind ROBUR’s buoyancy. “We have created a home for specialists – they did not go away during COVID. We did not release people to achieve a certain cost-cutting ratio, because we all agreed that the pandemic would be over one day and that we would eventually need good people and good specialists to continue our mission.”

As businesses emerge from the crisis, companies which retained their staff and culture seem to have generally fared better than those who used staff livelihoods to balance their COVID-ravaged books. While ROBUR did everything to protect its staff, it wasn’t necessarily easy. “It was a big challenge, I really had to manoeuvre between costs and keeping people,” Jan-Jörg says.

“We took the opportunity to increase the quality of our people. We knew that when the pandemic was over, we would be able to serve our customers with the best quality of products and services and honestly, I didn’t want to give our competitors the opportunity to get the good people that we have trained.”

It is not surprising that ROBUR protected the livelihoods of its staff through the pandemic, as the company positions its skilled specialists as a key differentiator in the delivery of products and services. “We always have to be ahead of our competition with our quality delivery and this doesn’t always come naturally. You need to get the right people who understand, for example, how to repair a wind blade, how to engineer a pipe, how to work with robotics.”

Despite the challenges of late, Jan-Jörg is energised about ROBUR’s future: “In the next three years we would like to double or triple our revenue.” He sees this revenue coming from continued global expansion into new regional markets, including further expansion into the US and Latin America. “Expanding further in Europe too,” Jan-Jörg adds, “there’s still a lot of room in Europe.” The CEO considers the question a moment longer, “and even though we are big enough in Germany, if we found a small or specialist operator in the country with a good service portfolio that fits our philosophy, I would expand acquisition organically in Germany too. We are also looking into northern Europe, at Sweden and Denmark. Scandinavia, watch this space.

GREENPEAK Partners announced today that through their holding group PARATUS, they have acquired a majority stake in D.A.T.A. Corporation Softwareentwicklungs GmbH (D.A.T.A.) in Vienna. D.A.T.A. is a leading provider of RIS and PACS solutions servicing outpatient radiologists in Austria led by a strong management team.

As the first investment by PARATUS, D.A.T.A. is a building block in establishing the leading healthcare software and IT-service provider in the German-speaking region.

Daniel Beringer, Managing Partner for GREENPEAK and CEO of PARATUS, commented, “We are thankful that D.A.T.A. has placed their trust in us as a partner for PARATUS and shares our ESG values and long-term vision. We look forward to working together with D.A.T.A. to continue building a platform that will greatly enhance the treatment of patients through the use of cutting-edge technology”.

Eduardo Desits, Managing Director of D.A.T.A., commented: “In partnering with the PARATUS Group, we were able to achieve a succession arrangement that continues the development intentions of the previous shareholders of D.A.T.A. and affirms management objectives that promise a profitable and exciting future for all stakeholders. This lays the foundation for shaping D.A.T.A.’s future jointly and proactively with PARATUS.

Rainer Anzböck, also Managing Director of D.A.T.A., said: “With PARATUS, there is a particular focus on technology development and the sharing of expert knowledge and best practices. The orientation of the group with respect to ESG criteria also enables us to set a new growth agenda that includes green IT, humanity in the workplace with employee development programs, and the high demands on data protection and data security.”

It offers 170 rooms in a high-quality design, a restaurant with 156 seats indoors and outdoors, and a spectacular rooftop bar with 60 seats and a view over downtown Vienna. The initially planned opening date last year had to be postponed due to the COVID- 19 pandemic. MHP already operates Le Méridien Vienna in the Austrian capital.

“MOOONS Vienna not only aims to inspire discerning business and leisure travelers, but is also set to become an urban hotspot,” said MHP Managing Director Michael Wagner. “We are certain that the MOOONS concept will enrich Vienna’s hotel and gastronomy scene.”

“The acquisition of the premium and boutique brand MOOONS provides MHP with additional growth options with its own hotel brand,” added MHP Managing Director Dr. Jörg Frehse. “This is another important step in our expansion strategy, which we intend to implement as a soon-to-be listed company.”

As reported, MHP is securing future growth on the capital side through the planned stock market listing. To this end, it is planned to contribute all shares in MHP GmbH to Lifespot Capital AG, Munich, which is already listed on the Munich open market. The necessary process steps are proceeding according to plan and should be completed by the end of this year.

Only a few days ago, MHP announced that it had acquired the former Swissotel Basel together with the US private equity company H.I.G Capital and concluded a long-term management contract for the hotel operation. Following extensive modernization, the hotel will reopen in the first half of 2022 as the “Marriott Hotel Basel”. In addition, the “Hotel Luc” on Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt, which is also operated by MHP, is expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2021 as a member of the Marriott Autograph Collection following a fundamental modernization.

MHP was advised on the transaction in Vienna by the law firms Wiedenbauer Mutz Winkler & Partner Rechtsanwälte GmbH, Vienna, Jung & Schleicher Rechtsanwälte, Berlin, and NWT Wirtschaftsprüfung & Steuerberatung GmbH.

In a prime location in Basel between the Badischer Bahnhof train station and the historic Old Town, the hotel opened in 1984 and has 238 rooms. The former hotel has been closed since November 2020. The parties agreed not to disclose the financial details of the acquisition.

“We consider the future Marriott Hotel Basel to be a jewel. Together with H.I.G, we will invest several million Swiss francs in the modernization of the hotel as part of the brand change to reposition it on the local and international hotel market under a franchise agreement with Marriott International,” commented MHP managing director Dr. Jörg Frehse.

“Despite the challenges posed by Corona, our hotel group is in an excellent operational and financial position to expand, especially in the premium segment,” adds MHP Managing Director Ralf Selke. “In addition to continuing our previous growth in partnership with institutional hotel investors, we also want to become more involved in the hotel real estate market through co-investments in the future.”

The transaction is part of MHP’s defined expansion strategy, which is supported and secured on the capital side by the company’s planned stock market listing. As announced on June 9, 2021, it is planned to contribute all shares in MHP GmbH to Lifespot Capital AG, Munich, which is already listed on the Munich Open Market. According to the plans, this reverse IPO is to be completed by the end of this year.

MHP was advised on the acquisition of the Basler Hotel by the law firms GSK Stockmann, Munich and Luxembourg, and Sailler von Dall’Armi Pöschl & Partner Wirtschaftsprüfer Steuerberater Rechtsanwälte, Munich and Zurich, in partnership with the law firm HütteLAW Advokatur und Notariat, Zug.