Nashua acquires Prodoc

The price tag may be a deciding factor when selling your company but when you’re looking for a long term partner, experience, understanding of the industry and shared objectives should be considered too. Prodoc found all of these in South African Nashua.

Swedish Prodoc delivers equipment and services for handling information and documents, such as multi-functional printers and photocopiers. The company is the general agent for Nashuatec, a Ricoh brand. But in the mature Swedish market, selling hardware is not enough, it is just the beginning of the service undertakings.

“We have three legs to stand on. We deliver to retailers all over Sweden, we deliver directly to the end customer and we also handle the printing services for many Swedish companies. It means that we create adaptable solutions and take responsibility for making sure the handling of documents works perfectly”, says Kenneth Bengtsson, owner of Prodoc together with Pär Arvidsson.

“In three years we grew, invested and made acquisitions. Moreover, we had acquired the company with borrowed money, so we were faced with a choice. Either consolidation or bring in outside funding. We chose growth and bringing in a partner who could contribute with experience and competence.”

Pär and Kenneth contacted various financial advisers and chose Valentum in the end.

“They were knowledgeable about our industry, which is very important, they were also very eager. Choosing the right company for such an important task is always somewhat of a gamble, but it turned out we definitely made the right choice”, says Kenneth Bengtsson.

Prodoc felt the biggest challenge was presenting the company in a comprehensible way. To be able to collect and make sense of the figures, forecasts and processes. And Valentum did a terrific job.

“Being 120% dedicated, they managed to put down our whole business on paper and we are very happy with the work they did. For three years we hadn’t stopped, so producing a comprehensible presentation of Prodoc’s concept wasn’t easy. Even Valentum found it complicated but they left no stone unturned.”

The work Valentum put in was also commended by Nashua, the South African company that became Prodoc’s owner. Nashua is the general agent for Nashuatec’s products in South Africa and a part of the Reunert group, a large South African conglomerate.