WTech Fire, the private equity-backed fire safety engineering group, has acquired Cork-based Safety Tech Fire, marking its 10th deal in the three years since Dutch investor Waterland secured a majority stake in the group.
WTech, which acquired Safety Tech Fire for a sum understood to be about €5 million to €6 million, designs, manufactures, installs and maintains water-based fire protection and detection systems for customers ranging from residential developers to data centre companies.
The group now employs more than 600 people and generates an annual turnover of about €130 million, making it one of the larger fire safety groups in Europe.
Safety Tech, meanwhile, employs more than 26 people across its two offices in Midleton and Ballintemple, Co Cork. It supplies, services and installs fire safety systems and counts government agencies, hotels and multinationals among its customer base.
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Patrick O’Donovan, managing director of Safety Tech, will continue to lead the business, now part of the wider WTech group, he said in a statement. “We are delighted to embark on this exciting new chapter with WTech Fire Group, a trusted and strategic partner for our business,” he said.
“Over the past 22 years, Safety Tech Fire has built a reputation for delivering exceptional service and maintaining strong client relationships.”
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WTech chief executive Ted Wright said Safety Tech is a “great business” and the deal “represents the continued realisation of our strategy to grow our business and strengthen our position as a leader in fire safety”.
The Mullingar-based group has now acquired 10 companies since Waterland came on board as a majority shareholder in 2021 for an undisclosed sum, prompting a flurry of deal-making.
The Irish arm of the Dutch private equity group has invested in five platform companies here since 2019, including Meath-based data centre cable specialist MTM Engineering, Net Zero Group — formed through the Waterland-backed merger of two green heating and plumbing companies in 2023 — and the Silver Stream Healthcare nursing home group.
The group has then added smaller, complementary businesses to those platforms through acquisition.
Despite global headwinds, deal-making in the Republic has been relatively resilient in 2024.
Although the volume of transactions in the second quarter of the year was down 11 per cent on the same period last year, about 400 deals are expected in this, analysts from Davy Stockbrokers said in an August report.
This “compares very favourably with historic levels, as the market looks to have now settled at a structurally higher level of mergers and acquisitions activity”, they said.
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