insight

The youngest subsidiary is growing rapidly

The CWS employee magazine
01/2021
CWS Fire Safety
Thanks to a successful buy-and-build strategy, CWS Fire Safety has quickly risen to become one of Germany’s leading fire protection providers.

The youngest member of the CWS family is not yet three years old but already figures among the big players in its sector. As an end-to-end provider of fire safety solutions, CWS Fire Safety GmbH is focussed on operators of all types of real estate. From consultation to planning, design and installation to acceptance, right through to maintenance and repair, its customers get everything from a single source – including extinguishing systems, fire alarm systems, fire doors and fire safety training.

Smoke detector

The company was founded in 2018 as CWS International's third business unit. In 2019 CWS Fire Safety tripled its sales, and 2020 saw the company’s turnover actually soar to more than three times as high as in the same period the previous year. This means that CWS Fire Safety now has around 500 employees and in 2020 generated sales of EUR 36 million.

Around 500 employees currently work for CWS Fire Safety.
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The employees of CWS Fire Safety generated sales of EUR 36 million in 2020.

This rapid growth has taken place on the basis of three expansion strategies, namely organic growth, the development of scalable business processes and, above all, through the acquisition of additional fire safety companies. The three-person M&A team at CWS Fire Safety has acquired a total of 20 German fire safety companies in recent years – 12 of them in 2020 alone. The central team has successfully integrated this branch. The best-known transactions include the acquisition of Jungels Feuerschutz GmbH, MARANG Brandschutz & Technologie GmbH and Feurobrand Feuerlöschtechnik GmbH. “We are currently expanding our nationwide network, and in the long term we aim to become Europe’s biggest fire safety service company,” says Ulrich Schild, General Manager CWS Fire Safety. “We also set up the CWS Fire Safety Academy last year in order to have enough specialist personnel for achieving this objective.”

The rapid rise of the young company has not gone unnoticed, with CWS Fire Safety nominated in 2020 for its recruiting campaign (Precisely your craft. Only better.) and now receiving a further nomination for an M&A award and the buy-and-build strategy.

Ulrich Schild, General Manager CWS Fire Safety
Ulrich Schild, General Manager CWS Fire Safety