CHEMICA acquired by DENTRESSANGLE

Dentressangle Initiatives, the investment company set up in 2009 by the Dentressangle family, agreed in November 2011 to acquire Chemica, the Saint-Etienne-based manufacturer of heat transfer films for textile decoration, from its private shareholders, at an enterprise value of . It was Chemica's second LBO: Evolem had backed the company six years earlier, a period during which its revenue doubled to . Oaklins' French team advised the sellers. By then, Chemica had grown into a small group. It had opened subsidiaries in the United States in 2007 and in Hong Kong, and in 2009 it had acquired SEFA, a French manufacturer of heat transfer presses based in Carcassonne, with both companies selling mainly through international networks of distributors. The deal laid the foundations of Flexdev, the textile personalisation group that Dentressangle built around Chemica and SEFA. Over the following years, the group bought the Italian screen-printing specialist Stilscreen in 2012, opened a new Chemica plant in 2014 and acquired Elms in the United Kingdom, doubling its revenue in six years. Flexdev was later renamed ID Unlimited, and Dentressangle sold a majority stake to TowerBrook in 2026.