TPF acquire 70 % of the ownership of the Brazilian Company Projetec

We have the pleasure to announce you that TPF has just completed a major acquisition.

By the end of December 2009, we reached an agreement allowing us to acquire 70 % of the ownership of the Brazilian Company Projetec. This agreement will become effective by the end of February 2010, after completion of all the administrative requirements.

With its 400 collaborators, the Company Projetec, established in Recife (a city of Northeast Brazil with four million inhabitants but also capital of the State of Pernambuco), is the first engineering firm in this region.

Projetec doubled its turnover in 2009 to 15 million Euros and registered a net profit of 9 % on turnover.

The company has two main activities, each with the support of 200 collaborators.

• The first field of activity concerns water supply in the agricultural and urban
  sectors. From drawing of master-plans and design to work supervision as well
  as networks managing, Projetec offers multiple services.
  Recognized as a leader in this sector in Brazil, the company realized also a lot of
  projects in Central and Latin America
• The second field of activity concerns work supervision related to infrastructure
  and industrial projects. To illustrate this, let’ say for instance that Projetec is
  leader of the consortium in charge of the supervision and the construction works
  of the "Transnordestina" Railway line across the State of Pernambuco.
  The Railway line will be 1100 km long.

The acquisition of the Company has two main objectives:

• The additional expertise of our Brazilian personnel will enable us to accelerate
  and reinforce our growth in countries such as Angola and through the know-how
  of its collaborators, to take part in the development of water sector projects with
  our Asian and African subsidiaries.
• To take advantage of the growth in Brazil's economy by continuing and
  accelerating the development of Projetec, providing our resources and expertise
  in the field of water treatment, cement and gas plants

We will be happy to reiterate our Indian experience as we multiplied there the turnover by ten in three years !

Through this acquisition, the profile of TPF evolves significantly ! TPF, created in Belgium in 1991 with 25 collaborators remained a Belgian company till 2000 even if the company grew up to 250 people. TPF became in the year 2005 a lead European Company with 600 collaborators, most of them working out of Belgium.

Although TPF has become now, with its 1600 permanent employees, a company whose most of its executives are based out of Europe, it should be noticed at the same time that the number of employees in Belgium remained constant. The TPF subsidiaries cover over 14 countries around the world : Brazil, India, France and Belgium being the most important in descending alphabetic sort.

All these elements allow us to remain optimistic.
If the European crisis, characterized by a haemorrhage of the industrial activity, a stagnation of the tertiary sector and by significant budget deficits would generate a decrease in public and private investments, the pursuit of growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America would allow TPF to face this difficult period and to continue its development.