Yachtmen my friends, do you know Altor ? Of course not, don't look for, me either until this morning. other is an investor from northern Europe who describes himself as :
"Altor is a family of private equity funds focused on investing in and developing up to medium sized companies with’a Nordic origin. We want to create enduring values up to make a real difference as a valuable partner for owners and managers in buiding by world class companies. We work with a Nordic team with extensive international experience in fields such as private equity, consulting, investment banking and various industrial sectors."
But why so talk ?
Because Altor owns in his moneybag Navico, who is the parent of marine electronics brands Simrad, B&G up to Lowrance, among others. And another entity under the thumb of Altor is be a totally unknown dark society, Digital Marine Solutions. Look, they also owns Rossignol skis brand ! But I digress.
D.M.S. just announced (¹) to inquire Jeppesen marine division, and so the charting brand C-Map charts, that Jeppesen had purchased in 2007 (²). To believe that this purchase has not fulfilled the hopes laid upon him by the subsidiary of the US Boeing group , and that he chose to focus on sound market aviation base.
The fact is that C-Map, after crossing the Atlantic from Italy to Colorado, operates nine years later his crossing back to Europe, and more specifically to Norway. That is probably a good deal for Navico, who can features its many chartplotters cheaply, while continuing to provide this charting to traditional Jeppesen Marine customers / C-Map charts.
What consequence for boaters ? Certainly not a revolution. But the very bad publicity to the C-Map cartography by the dramatic grounding of Team Vestas in the last Volvo Race (³) is probably not unrelated to this transaction, and it is very likely that buyers will make every effort to burnish the image of a historical vector charting, long market co-leader with Italian enemy-brother Navionics. Serious improvements are to be expected, to the benefit of end users, You and me.
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(¹) Press release of 16 March 2016
(²) See my post The stakeholders of electronic charting
(³) Read about it Raster charts... the come back
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