CLS Acquires Woods Hole Group
French satellite-services specialist CLS - subsidiary of the French Space Agency (CNES), ARDIAN (an independent investment company) and IFREMER (the French research institute for exploitation of the sea) - has acquired the Woods Hole Group, an American company specialised in sustainable and resilient solutions for coastal sciences and engineering, applied ecology, oceanography and measurement systems.
By acquiring Woods Hole Group, CLS, specialised in environmental monitoring, can offer solutions including field equipment and services, data analysis, modelling, environmental assessment and related expertise to its customers.
Christophe Vassal, CEO of CLS, states to have great expectations regarding the success of the future services that will benefit from the synergy between CLS and Woods Hole Group. The two organisations have complementary products: solutions and services. While Woods Hole Group brings expertise in coastal and ecological expertise, and sub-surface measurement systems, CLS offers 30 years of experience in ocean surface observation, data collection, data processing and data dissemination. CLS are already strongly involved in measuring the impact of climate change (calculation of sea level rise, observation of a changing ocean, tracking of mishandled fauna) and they complete this observation by the local and coastal climate change modelling expertise of Woods Hole Group. This fusion of capabilities meets CLS and Woods Hole Group client needs which are increasingly demanding.
Future
Woods Hole Group employs just under 50 people with 2016 sales of nearly USD10M. CLS has a turnover of USD120M in 2016 and plans to increase it to more than USD135M in 2017. The group, which has been achieving strong growth in recent years, has set ambitious goals to pursue developing new markets with CLS.
