Most advisors are paid to have an opinion. We’re paid when the asset performs.
We back food and agri-processing businesses across Central & Eastern Europe and stay to run them: sourcing the asset, executing the deal, then holding the plan to account on the operating floor.
What we look for
Everything we would tell you on a first call, before you make it.
If that’s roughly your business, the conversation is worth having even if you’re two years from deciding.
We buy the business, then we run it. The whole asset, not one stage.
Two halves of one job: get into the right business, then make it perform.
Origination and transactions
The best food and agri businesses in the region never reach a banker’s list. We find them first. Direct, off-market, no broker in between. Then we execute it ourselves, and we read the asset like people who have run one.
- We approach owners directly, long before there is a process
- We run our own diligence: the numbers, the tax position, and the plant floor
- We structure the deal and set up the vehicle
- We negotiate the SPA and arrange the financing
First conversation
One meeting, no process, no advisers in the room.
Indicative offer
A price range and a structure on paper, before you commit to anything.
Diligence
The plant floor and the numbers we do ourselves. Legal and tax go to advisers we know.
Terms and funding
SPA and financing negotiated in parallel, not one after the other.
Close
Ownership transfers. The same two people are still there on Monday.
Ownership and performance
The value in a processing deal isn’t in the price. It’s in what comes after. After closing, the thesis is either delivered or it isn’t. Most producers in this region are held back by the same two things: cost they cannot see, and a market they cannot reach. We go after both.
- We take energy out of the cost base: procurement, consumption, and generation on site
- We take the ceiling off the plant, so capacity stops being the limit on what you can sell
- We put in reporting that shows what the business is actually doing, and run it against the plan monthly
- We grow it by acquisition too: competitors, suppliers, the businesses next door
Energy & Technology
- Energy audit and efficiency improvement
- Energy procurement optimisation
- Technology optimisation
- DCS / control-system optimisation and development
- Concept design, basic engineering and investment proposals
Process & Organisation
- Organisation building, optimisation and rationalisation
- Governance systems and operating framework
- Controlling-system implementation
- Business planning
- Technical-leadership coaching
Quality, Safety & Market Access
- Retail-grade certification (BRC, IFS, ISO 9001, 14001, 50001), the standards Western European buyers require
- HACCP system design and review
- Occupational- and operational-safety audit
- ATEX consulting
- Pre-commissioning technical review
Diagnosis
We assess the operation and quantify the untapped reserve.
Proposal and return
Concrete measures, investment plan, expected savings.
Delivery
We carry it through from design via investment and commissioning to operation.
Independent, hands-on, and on the hook. Here’s the structure.
The parts of this you would otherwise have to ask about.
We invest alongside our partners through dedicated SPVs, and our fees carry a success component tied to verified performance.
Independence. Privately owned. No affiliations. Documented source-of-funds discipline and clean ownership chains on every structure we run.
Decisions. You deal with the two people who decide. No investment committee in another country, no fund cycle setting the timetable.
Dealmakers, entrepreneurs and operators. Not a fund with a deck.
Two partners across the full deal lifecycle. Plant floors and deal tables behind both.
Co-founder of Penmark. 13 years in M&A, investment and advisory across Hungary and the CEE region. Former Head of M&A at the Hungarian Lottery, where he built the M&A function and its international expansion strategy, after starting at Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division and EY Transaction Advisory. Deep financial due-diligence background, especially in agri-food and real estate. Corvinus University Budapest; USC Marshall School of Business.
LinkedIn
Co-founder of Penmark and an entrepreneur by track record, not just by title. He has founded and scaled an agri-food company. A senior, cross-functional background across energy and control engineering, quality and compliance systems, law, finance and investment, including raising ~€35M of institutional and bank financing. At Penmark he leads investments and value creation: the post-close work where value is actually created and measured in verified performance, not slideware. Having sat on the owner’s side of the table, he reads a target the way the people running it do.
LinkedInLet’s talk about what’s left on the table.
Selling the business, buying one, or wondering what reserve yours is still hiding. It starts with a conversation. Nothing you tell us leaves the room.