The Seged design office joins forces with ABO-Group to open up its field of intervention – Le Journal des Entreprises
ABO-Group, a Belgian engineering company specializing in soil research, geotechnical and geophysical studies, the environment and energy, which brings together 13 companies, has just completed its second external growth operation on French soil , in just a few months. After Dynaopt in Champigny-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne), ABO has just completed the acquisition of the Var studies office Seged (Society for studies and management of the environment and waste), specializing in the fields of the environment, water, biodiversity and ecology. The company, based in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, employs 37 people who work on behalf of contracting authorities throughout France. It remains headed by Florent Marie, its founder, who also becomes development director of ABO-Group.
Synergies for controlled growth
The merger is part of a context of shared growth for the two companies, and greater consideration of environmental issues and the consequences of climate change by project owners. “Together, we are obviously stronger and we are convinced that we are giving ourselves an additional chance to accelerate our development while nature and the environment are becoming a little more important every day”, says Frank de Palmenaer, CEO of ABO-Group. The listed company employs 650 people, half of them in France, and achieved 63.1 million euros in turnover in 2021, up 28%.
For Seged, joining the Belgian group opens up new prospects just over twenty years after its creation, and in particular an ability to offer global responses to its customers: “For example, the subsidiary ABO-ERG (born of the merger with the ERG design office, in La Seyne-sur-Mer, editor’s note) masters the floor solutions we need. And tomorrow, with all the other entities of the group, we will be able to offer our customers diagnostics definition of constraints and solutions. Seged is fortunate to be a general environmental firm. With ABO, we pool resources and skills to provide a common and complete solution”, explains Florent Marie.
Anticipating the future
With 25% growth recorded in 2022 (€2.6 million in turnover), Seged is banking on controlled development for the years to come. This association with ABO-Group opens up for the design office “the possibility of developing new themes, proposing new innovative working methods, linked to artificial intelligence, monitoring or robotics, thus carrying out more advanced and faster studies.” Potential for synergies also exists in the water sector. “Tomorrow, we will be able to provide outstanding solutions in terms of the ecological restoration of waterways, wetlands and ecological continuities”, adds Florent Marie, for whom this vision is essential insofar as his teams plan on projects at more than 10, 40, even 50 years old.
