The permanent home for Europe’s Hidden Champions.

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HEOROT

Europe built its grid in one generation. Today, 40 percent of its distribution grid is older than 40 years.

Data centres, heat pumps and electric vehicles all need new grid connections. Each one runs through a transformer, and a power transformer now takes 128 weeks to deliver on average.

A transformer moves as fast as its slowest part. Windings, bushings and tap changers each come from a small circle of qualified specialists.

The real bottleneck is the supply chain behind every transformer, built on a small number of specialist suppliers.

Behind each of them stands another layer of suppliers: copper wire, insulation paper, porcelain, resin cores, contacts and drives.

One late component can hold back a transformer worth millions, and with it the grid connection of an entire data centre.

Many of these suppliers are family companies. In Germany, 57 percent of Mittelstand owners are now 55 or older.

At the same time, the owners of these companies are retiring, and capacity is shrinking with them.

Heorot Group is building a permanent home for these suppliers. We buy them from their founders, keep them, and connect them into one group that delivers.

Catalog

Parts for the grid

    See product

    Rigid Conduit Fittings

    01 · The backbone

    Europe’s industrial base runs on quiet world leaders.

    Of the roughly 3,400 Hidden Champions in the world, 1,915 are based in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Each one leads a global niche, often with a component the rest of industry depends on.

    Hermann Simon, 2020 count, via iwd 20/2022

    02 · The founders

    The generation that built them is reaching retirement.

    In 2003, one in five German Mittelstand owners was 55 or older. By 2025 the share had reached 57 percent, more than two million people.

    KfW Research, January 2026

    03 · The handover

    More than a million companies face a decision before 2030.

    Around 545,000 German Mittelstand owners plan to hand over their company by the end of 2029. Another 569,000 plan to close it. In Switzerland, 90,667 SMEs need a successor.

    KfW Research, January 2026 · Dun & Bradstreet, 2025

    04 · The demand

    Meanwhile, the grid needs more of what they make.

    Data centres, electrification and rearmament all draw on the same suppliers. A power transformer now takes 128 weeks to deliver on average, and prices have risen 77 percent since 2019.

    Wood Mackenzie supply chain survey, Q2 2025, US market

    05 · The owner

    These companies need an owner for the next fifty years.

    A buyout fund has a fixed life of around ten years, so every company it buys is bought to be sold again. Heorot is permanent capital. We buy founder companies to keep them, grow them and connect them.

    Heorot Group, Bern and Zürich

    Our conviction

    Heorot is building a permanent industrial group for Europe. We believe ownership should outlast the owner, operators should lead, and the cash a company earns should stay at work in its industry.

    Criteria

    What we buy

    Sheet HC 01
    Issued 2026
    Bern · Zürich

    Geography
    Central Europe
    Sectors
    • Electrical fittings, conduit accessories and cable glands
    • Circuit protection, switchgear and switching devices
    • Industrial control and automation components
    • Hazardous area and ATEX products
    • Electrical enclosures, junction boxes and grounding
    • Industrial connectors and other specialised electrical installation components
    Ownership
    Founder or family owned
    Every conversation is confidentialStart a conversation →

    Divisions

    Four divisions under one roof

    Each division carries a name from the world of Beowulf and holds companies in one industrial field.

    • LeomaOld English for lightGrid and data centre powerTransformers, switchgear, cabling and grid connections for terrestrial data centres.
    • EarendelOld English for morning starSpacePower systems and precision components for the space economy.
    • WyrmOld English for dragonQuantum computingCalibration, control and test equipment, the picks and shovels of quantum.
    • NicorOld English for water monsterUnderwater data centresSubsea housings, cooling and power for compute at sea.

    The name

    him on mod bearn,
    þæt healreced hatan wolde,
    medoærn micel men gewyrcean

    scop him Heort naman

    It came into his mind to have men build a hall, a great mead hall. He gave it the name Heorot.

    Beowulf, lines 67 to 69 and 78

    In Beowulf, King Hrothgar builds Heorot as the greatest hall of his age, a place to gather his people and share what they have won. Heort means hart, and the poem also calls it hornreced, the horned hall.

    We chose the name for the same purpose: one lasting house for companies built by one generation and carried by the next.

    Heort, the hartHornreced

    Inquiries

    Europe’s industrial base needs owners who stay.

    We work with founders planning their succession and with operators who want to build inside real companies.

    Sell your company → Join as an operator →

    Founders

    For founders planning their succession

    We buy companies to keep them. Your company keeps its name, its people and its home. Every conversation is confidential.

    Operators

    Forward Deployed Vikings

    We hire engineers and operators who want to work inside industrial companies, on the shop floor and in the numbers.

    Contact