Normec is a Dutch testing, inspection and certification (TIC) group, co-founded by its chief executive Joep Bruins and owned since 2020 by the private equity firm Astorg. Since 2017 it has made 59 TIC acquisitions, most of them in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, buying food and environmental testing labs, life sciences labs, certification bodies, inspection firms and building fire safety specialists. It has not published what it paid for any of them. Our research gives the guide. Small TIC firms like the ones it buys sold at a median of 8.0x EBITDA in deals under $50M (21 deals), against 9.9x for TIC deals of every size (54 deals).
Normec sometimes buys only part of a firm. In three UK deals in 2024 it took a majority, so its offer to you may be for part of your firm. The firms it buys move onto its systems and, in time, take its name.
Normec Group Companies and Divisions
Bruins runs Normec from Amsterdam. He founded it with Marco Zomer and Martje Princen, and the group began with their purchase of Eerland Certification in Geldermalsen. Summit Partners invested at the end of 2017, and Astorg agreed to buy the group from Summit in June 2020, with management investing alongside. Astorg is still the owner. In July 2024 it moved Normec into a continuation fund, a new fund it manages with money from new investors, in which Normec’s leadership also invested.
Normec works in 12 countries, by its own count in September 2026, and its website lists more than 160 locations. The group has six business units: Certification, Environmental Testing, Foodcare, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Inspections and Training. A firm Normec buys joins the unit for its trade, so a food lab goes to Foodcare and a pharmaceutical lab to Healthcare & Life Sciences. Two parts of the group make acquisitions themselves, the Foodcare unit, which has added food labs and food quality firms, and Normec Abiolab, a French lab group that joined in 2022.
How Many Companies Normec Acquires, and What Size
In our data Normec made at least 14 acquisitions in 2024, more than in any earlier year, and at least 11 in 2025.
On size, the public guide comes from Bruins himself. He told MenA.nl, the Dutch M&A news site, in December 2020 that the companies Normec had bought had between 10 and 150 staff and that it put “no energy into start-ups” (our translation from Dutch).
What Normec Buys and Where
Food accounts for 15 of Normec’s 59 purchases, more than any other trade, but it has bought in every part of TIC.
| Trade | Acquisitions |
|---|---|
| Food testing and food safety: food, cosmetics and feed labs, produce inspection, sampling and quality control | 15 |
| Environmental testing, water and hygiene: legionella and drinking water testing, environmental labs, health and safety consultancy | 11 |
| Life sciences and healthcare: pharmaceutical testing and medical device labs, clean-air validation, pharmaceutical quality services | 11 |
| Certification: management systems, product conformity, emissions verification and other schemes | 9 |
| Industrial and electrical inspection: statutory inspection, electrical testing and safety equipment, non-destructive testing (NDT) | 8 |
| Building fire safety and compliance inspection | 5 |
No buyer has made more TIC acquisitions in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany taken together: Normec has made 38 there, against 32 for Eurofins Scientific. It started at home, with 21 of its first 25 deals in the Netherlands and Belgium. Of the 34 since 2023, only 8 were. It entered the UK in May 2023 and has bought seven firms in Germany since then, against two before. In August 2025 it bought its first three labs in the United States, and in 2026 it added another there and its first in Italy.
What Normec Pays: Acquisition Multiples
Buyers price a TIC firm as a multiple of its EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), the yearly profit they work from. At 8.0x, each $1M of EBITDA is worth $8M of enterprise value (EV). That is the value of the whole business; the owner repays any debt from it and keeps the rest.
We would expect firms of 10 to 150 staff, the range Bruins gave in 2020, to sell in deals under $50M, the smallest band in our TIC valuation research. That band holds firms with up to about $6M of EBITDA, and its median is 8.0x EBITDA (21 deals).
| EBITDA multiple | Revenue multiple | |
|---|---|---|
| TIC deals under $50M, median | 8.0x (21 deals) | 1.52x (80 deals) |
| All TIC deals, median | 9.9x (54 deals) | 1.8x (142 deals) |
| TIC deals of $500M and over, median | 12.2x (11 deals) | 2.15x (15 deals) |
At 8.0x EBITDA, a firm earning a 15% margin sells for 1.2x revenue. At a 20% margin the same multiple gives 1.6x. A revenue multiple tells you little until you know the margin.
Small TIC firms sell for a lower multiple than large ones: 8.0x EBITDA in deals under $50M against 12.2x in deals of $500M and over. A sale of Normec itself would sit in that top band, since it put a value of more than $2.1 billion on the whole group in 2024. We think the gap is one reason Normec and groups like it keep buying small firms. When several of them bid for the same firm, part of the gap can go to the owner.
What is your firm worth?
Send us three numbers: revenue, EBITDA and revenue growth rate. Within two working days we show you in confidence how your firm measures up against 2,841 TIC deals, which buyer groups have acquired firms like yours, and how any offer you hold compares with what they paid where terms are published.
Request your valuation assessment or email the numbers to marcin.majewski@aventis-advisors.com.
How Normec Structures a Deal
Normec publishes no deal terms and has no page for sellers. None of its announcements mentions an earn-out or a deferred payment. The stakes it took in its UK deals are on record in its filings there.
The 2024 accounts of Normec Holding UK Limited, filed at Companies House, show that it owned all of the three UK groups it bought in 2023. A note on events after the year end says it also bought the whole of the two firms its UK company acquired in 2025. In three UK deals in 2024 it bought between 70% and 88%. At one of them the founder is still registered as holding more than a quarter of the shares. How and when Normec buys the rest is not public.
If Normec buys 70% of a firm, the cash you receive at closing is for that 70%. What the other 30% is worth depends on what the agreement says about when you can sell it, to whom and at what value, and until then you hold a minority in a firm Normec controls. To compare Normec’s offer with another, add the cash at closing to what those terms make your 30% worth.
What Happens After Closing
“We do put everyone on the cloud, you have to go on as one brand,” Bruins told MenA.nl in December 2020 (our translation from Dutch). He said in the same interview that when Normec bought a German lab, the staff were handed a 25-page booklet explaining why Normec had bought the lab, who runs the group and what would change for each of them.
The name goes later. At least 33 of the 59 firms now trade as “Normec” followed by their old name. Where we can date the change, it came between a few months and nearly three years after the deal. Of the 21 firms bought since August 2024, 13 still trade under their own names. That may not last. Normec’s releases on two German labs bought in 2025 said the brand would continue “initially”.
In 16 of the 54 deals we have a source for, the announcement or the seller’s advisor says the founder or managers stayed on; in the others the sources do not say. In the 2020 interview Bruins said Normec had never dismissed anyone after an acquisition.
Normec’s Competitors for Your Company
Which groups compete with Normec for your firm depends on what it does and where it is. In the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, where Normec has made most of its acquisitions, the rivals most like it are the other TIC groups backed by private equity, chiefly Certania and Sansidor. Sansidor has made all 25 of its deals there.
| Buyer | Owner | TIC deals in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany since 2015 | Deals in trades Normec also buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eurofins Scientific | Listed | 32 | Food 16, environmental 8, life sciences 6, industrial inspection 1 |
| Certania | Private equity (Greenpeak, Summit Partners) | 30 | Environmental 9, certification 7, life sciences 6, industrial inspection 4, food 3 |
| Sansidor | Private equity (IK Partners) | 25 | Industrial inspection 12, environmental 7, building inspection 6 |
| Kiwa | Family-owned (SHV) | 23 | Certification 12, industrial inspection 3, food 2, building inspection 2 |
| SOCOTEC | Private equity (Cobepa) | 16 | Building inspection 15, industrial inspection 1 |
| GBA Group | Private equity (Ardian; Bridgepoint agreed July 2026) | 12 | Environmental 7, life sciences 3, food 2 |
| SGS | Listed | 11 | Food 4, environmental 2, certification 2, building inspection 1, life sciences 1 |
| Tentamus Group | Private equity (BC Partners) | 11 | Food 5, life sciences 5, environmental 1 |
| TUV Rheinland | Association-owned | 9 | Environmental 5, certification 1, food 1, industrial inspection 1 |
| TUV Austria | Association-owned | 8 | Industrial inspection 6, certification 1 |
In the UK, where Normec has bought since 2023, the most active buyers are Phenna Group, Celnor and SOCOTEC.
An owner who answers Normec’s approach alone sells at its price and on its terms. We run a competitive process among the TIC groups, private equity platforms and other buyers with a real reason to want your firm, Normec among them, so you choose between the best offers and get the best price.
Is This a Good Time to Sell to Normec?
Normec wants to buy now, and it has the money to. Like any private equity owner, Astorg aims to sell it in time for more than it paid, and Normec has grown mainly by buying smaller firms. Since mid-2020, when Astorg bought it, it has made at least 46 of its 59 acquisitions, and its staff has risen from about 1,200 to about 6,500.
Astorg bought the group for about $400M in 2020, as MenA.nl reported that December, and in July 2024 Normec put its own value at more than $2.1 billion. Both figures are for the whole group, including its debt and the firms bought along the way. The continuation fund Astorg raised that July, about $1.5 billion, was meant to keep Normec buying in Europe and take it into the US. Normec’s loans since March 2024 also include a facility for acquisitions. Benjamin Cordonnier, Astorg’s chief executive, told Mergermarket in September 2024 that the European market was “still super fragmented in the geographies where Normec plays”, with “a very deep M&A runway”. No sale of the group has been reported.
So Normec is a willing buyer today, with money set aside to keep buying, inside a group that will itself be sold one day. That tells you nothing about whether its offer is the best you could get.
Talk to us before you reply to Normec, and before you agree a figure or sign a letter of intent. We prepare your firm for a sale and bring the buyers with a real reason to want it to the same table, and the same people stay with you through to closing. If keeping the company serves you better, we tell you so. Our M&A advisory for TIC companies page sets out how we work.
Before you reply to a buyer
Send us three numbers: revenue, EBITDA and revenue growth rate. Within two working days we show you in confidence how your firm measures up against 2,841 TIC deals, which buyer groups have acquired firms like yours, and how any offer you hold compares with what they paid where terms are published.
About Aventis Advisors
We advise owners on sales with typical enterprise values between $5M and $100M, as partners of the Globalscope network. We also advise serial acquirers, which is how we know the way their offers are built and where they leave room.
Recent transactions:
- Advice to Apave on its acquisitions of ISOCERT and De Duurzame Adviseurs.
- Sale of CKSource, the rich-text editor developer, to PSG via Tiugo Technologies, after a global process that drew several letters of intent.
- Advice to Visma on its acquisition of SaldeoSMART.
“We were impressed with Marcin’s negotiating skills and Aventis’ ability to make things happen.”
Sindre Talleraas Holen, M&A Director, Visma
“Aventis Advisors did the heavy lifting so that our management team could stay focused on our business.”
Wiktor Walc, President, CKSource
Write to us at marcin.majewski@aventis-advisors.com. The first conversation is confidential.
Methodology
The count covers majority acquisitions of TIC firms by Normec or a Normec company, closed since 2017, each checked against Normec’s announcements or company pages, the seller’s advisor, the trade press or Mergermarket; five rest on Mergermarket or our own research alone. The deals come from the Aventis Advisors TIC deal database, built from Mergermarket and public sources such as acquirer and target press releases, news articles and annual reports, together with our own research. The UK stakes come from the accounts of Normec Holding UK Limited for 2024 and the registers of people with significant control, both at Companies House.
Each deal is counted under the group that made it at the time. Our TIC valuation pages credit each deal to the buyer’s owner today and draw the line of what counts differently, so Normec’s total there is higher. The counts are a minimum, because some of Normec’s deals reach our data after they are announced. The table of competitors counts each buyer’s TIC deals in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany since 2015 under its owner today.
The TIC medians come from our TIC valuation research, 2,841 deals since 2015, and use enterprise value (equity value plus net debt). Deal size is enterprise value where disclosed, otherwise the disclosed deal value. EBITDA multiples outside 1x to 60x are left out, and two outlying certification deals are left out of the revenue medians by deal size. Fewer deals publish EBITDA than revenue, so the two medians rest on different numbers of deals. Normec’s values are reported figures for the whole group. Euro figures are converted at the annual average rate, $1.120 per euro for 2019, $1.142 for 2020 and $1.082 for 2024.
