The Dutch investor, Kees Koolen, has acquired a majority stake in Enovates, a Belgian electric-vehicle charging-station manufacturer.
Following several years of underperformance, the support accompanying Koolen Industries' acquisition will be directed towards repositioning Enovates as Belgium’s largest charging-station manufacturer. The Dutch entrepreneur-turned-investor is well known for his philosophy of only going where he sees real growth and currently has his sights set on the electric-vehicle (EV) industry.
“Within the development of IoT, there is a big gap between technologies that work and technologies that make money,” Kees Koolen (pictured) told the European Institute of Innovation & Technology in an interview. “See, products like Fitbit are popular when they are brought to the market; the technology is simple and the product is cheap. People get used to it and don't use it anymore after a while. Getting successful means collecting data and helping to save lives.”
While the EV space might not currently be considered safe (yet), this won’t always be the case either. “In 20 years from now, people won't be allowed to drive a car in the city anymore. Too many casualties,” Kees pointed out. “We are now heading towards autonomous cars. There will be fewer accidents with autonomous cars. The cars can learn and never get tired.”
He has spent the last few years investing in the energy transition industry (among others) and has extensive experience scaling technology companies internationally. The acquisition presents a positive opportunity for Enovates, which has already manufactured more than 300,000 charging points situated across Europe.
The technology, products and customer relationships of Enovates continue under Enovates Group NV, providing professional AC charging infrastructure and open smart charging software for B2B customers, including future-oriented technology such as bidirectional charging.
“Our first priority is to give our customers certainty again and to safeguard the continuity of their charging infrastructure,” the company said in a statement. “We are working to ensure the continuity of service, software support and the availability of parts, so that ongoing projects are followed up and their charging infrastructure keeps working reliably. We do this the way it should be done: customer by customer, with the people they already knew.”
Many of the former team members will be moving with the company, so the technical knowledge, product experience and customer relationships are retained. Bart Vereecke, co-founder of Enovates, takes on the role of CEO again and is joined by four colleagues who share his extensive history with the company. “We do not want to be a copy of the past, but a sharper and more independent company with a clear way of working. A good, reliable product for our customers is central, with quality, service and support as the standard.”
