CapMan Growth invests in environmental technology company Tana

CapMan Growth Equity Fund III makes its first investment in the environmental technology company Tana. In recent years, Tana has grown significantly and become a global market leader in waste pre-treatment equipment. Its solutions play a key role in facilitating the circular economy. CapMan Growth’s investment is made in collaboration with Aaro Cantell, the team’s long-term industrial adviser and the main owner in Normet Group, and Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company. This investment serves as another great example of how the team’s investment strategy can adapt to the varying needs of Finnish and Nordic growth companies.

Tana’s business is to offer smart equipment and solutions for processing solid waste. The company’s product range features material recycling devices such as shredders and screens, as well as landfill compactors. To complement its equipment offering, the company also offers a wide range of spare parts, services, and digital solutions for its machinery. The company has customers in more than 50 countries, served by a comprehensive distributor network.

Tana’s solutions are helping humanity to resolve one of the greatest challenges currently: to increase the rate of recycling and reuse of materials, while waste volumes continue to grow across the globe. Enabled by its range of high-quality products, Tana has been able to maintain approximately 20% compounded annual turnover growth rate several years, while keeping up an excellent profitability level. The company’s turnover for the financial year ended this March is expected to exceed EUR 65 million. The parties to the agreement are also targeting to invest in strong growth in the future, as well.

CapMan Growth invests in Tana in collaboration with its long-term industrial adviser Aaro Cantell, who is best known as the main owner of the mining solutions provider Normet Group. Thanks to his background with Normet, Cantell has particularly strong experience spanning almost 20 years in generating rapid growth in a similar industry, and he is now set to take on an active role in supporting Tana’s future growth as the chair of its Board of Directors. In addition to providing his expertise, Aaro Cantell is also making a significant investment in the company. Completing the investor consortium is Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company and significant investments by the company’s operative management. Tana’s long-standing owner, Kari Kangas and his family, will remain the company’s largest owner.

“I am really excited about this opportunity to team up with Aaro, Elo, the company’s operative management and the long-term owner Kari Kangas to develop Tana towards global market leadership. The recycling and reuse of materials is a rapidly growing industry globally, and during its long history the company has demonstrated its ability to innovate and grow profitably despite the recent turbulent operating environment,” states Tomi Alén, the partner responsible for the Tana investment at CapMan Growth.

“Tana has been my passion for almost 30 years and has rewarded me in many ways. With my children’s passions elsewhere, and our strong growth strategy requiring even more experience and capital, partnering with CapMan Growth was a perfect fit for my plans. It will be very interesting to continue to be part of the growth story in an industry that has huge growth potential and where our work is truly meaningful,” explains Kari Kangas, Member of the Board of Tana.

“I’m thrilled for the opportunity to join Tana’s growth story. I have been following Tana’s impressive development for a long time, and I see there much of the same potential as I saw in Normet back in the day. I believe that I can help the company’s management on the road to renewal and profitable growth,” says Aaro Cantell, CapMan Growth’s long-term industrial adviser, who has grown Normet more than ten-fold in just over 15 years to achieve annual turnover of approximately EUR 500 million.

“This investment will enable Tana to grow even faster than before. It is great to have such experienced investors and even more industrial expertise to support our growth story,” says Kalle Saarimaa, CEO of Tana.

CapMan Growth is the leading Finnish growth investor making significant minority investments in entrepreneur-led growth companies with revenues ranging between €10–200 million euros. We offer entrepreneurs an alternative to selling the majority of their business by facilitating a partial exit while also supporting growth and internationalisation. We have been part of building companies such as Coronaria, Cloud2, Digital Workforce, Fennoa, Fluido, Neural DSP, Picosun, Sofigate, Silmäasema and Unikie.

For more information, please contact:

Tomi Alén, Partner, CapMan Growth, +358 50 412 1947