In the Labrunye family, the laundry profession, whether for individuals, companies, or public entities, has a long history stretching back over six generations and including a number of different business ventures, With this family expertise, Thomas Labrunye, supported by his father, Francis, founded Bulle de Linge after identifying a major need for the outsourcing of individual laundry for residents of medical-social facilities, mainly nursing homes, but also housing for people with disabilities, retirement homes, and nurseries.
At its 11 sites spread all over France, the latest of which will open this coming April in Gannat (central France), Bulle de Linge provides truly local service with guaranteed consistency. Adhering to strict hygiene standards, for which the company is certified, Bulle de Linge does the daily personal laundry, covering all types of items, of over 60,000 residents across 800 facilities. Each item is individually identified, with its characteristics analysed and saved in a database, to be tracked throughout the service process. The SME is integrated across its value chain, from the collection to the return of clean laundry to facilities, with a business that incorporates expertise from the dry cleaning and industrial laundry professions.
While the process is highly organised and digitalised, manual labour continues to make up most of the work. As such, the company’s leader has laid out an ambitious roadmap for HR governance. The company builds the loyalty of its teams with numerous benefits: quality of life in the workplace, training and promotions within the company, a variety of tasks, strong remuneration and value-sharing, the geographic location of work sites, most often in semi-rural areas, and support and job security for employees with disabilities, who currently make up over 8% of the workforce. This HR roadmap is also accompanied by a sustainability policy particularly oriented towards better management of resources (water, electricity, and gas), with the implementation of highly innovative systems.
A pure player in its market, the company has successfully completed its first phase of growth and now wants to replicate its business model at the international level by opening up new entities in Spain, Portugal, and Belgium.
“Our ability to launder different items under immaculate hygiene conditions is unique in the market and responds to a growing need tied to the broad trend of ageing populations in France and in the rest of Europe. To increase our operating capacities, we needed to raise funds, one, by bringing Crédit Mutuel Equity, a company that we’ve been familiar with for a long time, into the shareholder base and, two, by continuing our journey with our historic shareholder, BNP Paribas Développement. Both companies are partners with which we share the same philosophy of investing for the long term in a true entrepreneurial project. This transaction also offered the opportunity to invite key managers to invest more significantly in the company’s growth by becoming shareholders,” explains Thomas Labrunye.
“As a historic partner for Bulle de Linge since its founding, we are delighted to be able to assist Thomas Labrunye and his teams in establishing their international growth strategy while simultaneously welcoming in Crédit Mutuel Equity to take part in this new phase,”says Arnaud Lavril, Director of Equity Investments at BNP Paribas Développement.
“We are pleased to join this family SME with which we have built ties since its founding and whose successes we have tracked over time. The company’s leader has an excellent understanding of the market and has demonstrated his great skill as a manager. He has managed to adapt the Bulle de Linge model to make the company a profitable, essential player. Its position as a national leader offers great prospects for growth in a market with excellent potential thanks to facilities’ increased outsourcing of personal laundry services (70% of laundry volumes are still handled in-house). We will stand by the company to assist it with its growth in France and abroad,” says Mathieu Sollet, Director at Crédit Mutuel Equity.
- Investors
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Crédit Mutuel Equity
- Mathieu Sollet
- Alicia Simon
BNP Paribas Développement
- Arnaud Lavril
- Jean-Marc Dussourd
- Sitti Nouria Maliki
- Investor Experts
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Legal counsel
- Lamartine Conseil (Fabien Mauvais, Valentine Berquet)
Financial audit
- Cofigex (Jean-Charles Norris, Agathe Leclerc)
Legal, social, and tax audit
- Lamartine Conseil (Fabien Mauvais, Valentine Berquet, Manon Mestres, Justine Billard, Thalaa Imadah)
- Company
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Bulle de Linge
- Thomas Labrunye, Chairman
- Company experts
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Legal counsel
- Lext Avocats (Marie-Liesse Emo-Brioist)
About BNP Paribas Développement:
BNP Paribas Développement, an independent subsidiary of the international banking group BNP Paribas, is a French société anonyme company that for over 30 years has been directly investing its own capital as a minority shareholder to support the growth of high-performing SMEs and mid-size companies and to ensure their longevity by facilitating transfers. Beyond the financial resources it makes available to companies to provide stability, BNP Paribas Développement aims to support leadership teams over the long term as they carry out their medium-term strategic projects. The company’s positioning as a minority shareholder ensures that its partners have adequate governance without interference in day-to-day management, while benefiting from the strength of a well-known company and the experience of a partner with a diverse portfolio of over 400 equity investments.
For more information: www.bnpparibasdeveloppement.com - LinkedIn: BNP Paribas Développement
About Crédit Mutuel Equity:
Crédit Mutuel Equity is home to all of the Private Equity activities of Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale: Capital Développement (Capital Development), Capital Transmission (Capital Transfer), and Capital Innovation.
Crédit Mutuel Equity provides capital support to business leaders at all stages of development of their companies—from start-up to transfer—by giving them the resources and time required to implement their transformation projects. Crédit Mutuel Equity brings together over 350 business leaders, who share their beliefs and pose questions within a true network of entrepreneurs that allows each member, regardless of the nature of their project, to benefit from the experience of others. By investing its own capital (€ 4 billion), Crédit Mutuel Equity finances companies’ projects with timelines that are adapted to their growth strategies, in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Canada.
For more information: www.creditmutuel-equity.eu
About Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale:
A leading French bank and insurance company, with over 75,000 employees and serving over 29 million customers, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale offers a range of services to individual customers, local professionals, and companies of all sizes, via its 4,500 points of sale. Among the most solid banking groups in Europe, its equity capital amounted to € 53.2 billion and its CET1 ratio stood at 18.8% on 31 December 2021.
Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale brings together the Crédit Mutuel banks of the following federations: Centre Est Europe (Strasbourg), Sud-Est (Lyon), Île-de-France (Paris), Savoie-Mont Blanc (Annecy), Midi-Atlantique (Toulouse), Loire-Atlantique et Centre Ouest (Nantes), Centre (Orléans), Normandie (Caen), Dauphiné-Vivarais (Valence), Méditerranéen (Marseille), Anjou (Angers), Massif Central (Clermont-Ferrand), Antilles-Guyane (Fort-de-France), and Nord Europe (Lille). Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale also includes the Caisse Fédérale de Crédit Mutuel, the Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel (BFCM) and all its subsidiaries, notably CIC, Euro-Information, Assurances du Crédit Mutuel (ACM), TARGOBANK, Cofidis, Banque Européenne du Crédit Mutuel (BECM), Banque de Luxembourg, Banque Transatlantique, and Homiris.
More information is available at www.creditmutuelalliancefederale.fr