KIRKBI, the holding and investment company of the Kirk Kristiansen family, has signed an agreement to acquire KKR’s 49.8% stake in Välinge, a Swedish industrial R&D company, alongside the founding Pervan family that via Pervanovo Invest AB will maintain its majority ownership of 50.2%. The partnership with KIRKBI aims to further strengthen Välinge’s position as a leading industrial R&D company and flooring producer.
Niclas Håkansson, the Välinge CEO said: “We are very excited about the new ownership cooperation, which will help us continue the development and global roll-out of new technologies and ultimately benefit our customers and end-users. Today numerous licensees are keen to commercialize our powder based floors, which we plan to support in two steps. First Välinge will supply flooring products to licensees and in a second step Välinge will license out the technology which is needed to build large scale powder based factories. We look forward to continuing this development together with KIRKBI as co-owners.”
The company is based in Viken, Sweden, where it has a state-of-the-art research facility, which employs more than 130 highly specialised employees and researchers.
