Private equity owners sell Danish charging firm Spirii
French payments platform will take over
Danish private equity firm Nordic Alpha Partners (NAP) has ended its three-year ownership of EV charging firm Spirii by selling it to French payment solutions firm Edenred.
Over those three years, Spirii has expanded to 19 countries, delivered consistent double-digit growth figures month-on-month, and won more than 60pc of all public tenders in the Danish part of the business, NAP says. Spirii is now the second largest EV software platform in Denmark, according to latest figures from the Danish Transport Agency, only behind the sector peer Clever.
And, in the last two years, Spirii has won several customers within electrification and e-mobility globally, including the world’s largest logistics companies and retail giants, as well as several of the world’s largest energy and real estate companies, NAP adds.
“The company decided early on not to announce our many new large customers,” says NAP senior partner, Laurits Bach Sorensen on why Spirii growth may be under the radar.
“To put the size in context, in the last nine months alone, Spirii has installed more than 1000 chargers every month, and its international customers ordered the equivalent of over 4000 superchargers, which is more than 200pc of the total Danish market combined.”
NAP and Spirii decided that its “independent software platform had to be the primary investment focus, if the company was to achieve a global leadership position”, Bach Sorensen continues.
“This realisation led us to split the company into two independent businesses when we invested. Today, just 11 quarters later, both the Nordic turnkey business and the international software platform businesses are on a track to become category leaders, and we could actually have sold them as separate businesses in the exit process,” he says.
“With Edenred as owner, we will be able to continue the development of the Spirii platform and accelerate our global expansion,” says the firm’s CEO Tore Harritshoj. Edenred has a customer base of 60mn end-users and almost 1mn client companies.
Spirii’s partner charge point network spans two continents and more than 350,000 charge points through roaming agreements. It offers turn-key charging solutions, an EV charging management platform, and an end-user charging and roaming app.