Catana Group has announced the creation of a motorboat division in Portugal, with the acquisition of a majority stake in the company Composite Solutions. The catamaran manufacturer says that this Portuguese family company designs and produces custom-made nautical equipment, mainly in composite, for various nautical compartments (port entities, marinas, offshore wind farms, university research institutes, etc.).
For an investment of €2 million, Catana is taking a 50.01% stake in this company, valued at €4 million. At the same time, the Financière Poncin family group, a shareholder of Catana, will also take a 39.99% stake for €1.6 million. “This means that the French group will control 90% of Composite Solutions,” the press release concluded.
Concerns remain
According to the Federation of Specialized Trade, Procos, in October 2022, the activity has declined by 1.5% over one year. Nevertheless, the activity of beauty-health (+ 5.2%) and specialized food (+ 3.5%) are dynamic compared to October 2021. Point-of-sale traffic was heavily impacted by fuel issues and unfavorable weather. Compared to October 2019, a pre-covid year, the drop in footfall is very sharp (-20.9% in October). Shopping centers and the outskirts are more impacted than city centers with a gap of four to five points.
There are several reasons to be concerned about the future. The players are experiencing a very significant jaws effect due to the increase in their operating costs while the evolution of demand is very uncertain. Very few chains are able to pass on the increase in their costs in their sales prices. The federation is therefore asking, among other things, that the indexation of the Commercial Rent Index be limited to +3.5% for rents of all companies in 2023. It also invokes an absolute urgency: to cap the price of energy for 2023 and to retroact on contracts already signed to prevent the rate of defaults from accelerating.
