Jade Invest acquires China's Pudow Water

Pudow designs, sells, and leases water purification machines while offering water quality monitoring and filter replacement services to a range of businesses such as corporate offices, hotels, restaurants, schools, and hospitals. It claims to serve more than 300 clients, including Apple, Alibaba Group, IKEA, and J.P. Morgan.

The company positions itself as one of the few players in its field to have adopted “duplex purified mineralization” technology, which filters out pollutants such as heavy metals while retaining other minerals. Operations also encompass a cloud-based platform for monitoring and controlling water use remotely in real time.

Ludwig Nilsson, a managing partner at Jade Invest, described Pudow as well-positioned but with a limited business model. The plan is to tap an expected 20%-per-year growth rate in the Chinese water purification machine market across the next five years by accelerating growth, increasing market share, and addressing technology risks. 

“Despite the fact that Pudow is already a fast-growing and highly profitable business, we firmly believe that it operates below its potential,” Nilsson said in a statement. “Access to capital for private small to medium-sized enterprises in China continues to be a huge bottleneck even for businesses with solid end-user demand and high margins.”

Jade Invest was established in 2005 as a fund-of-funds focused on growth capital and pre-IPO opportunities in China. The firm has transitioned into a GP in recent years, noting a lack of qualified mid-market buyout firms in China. Previous activity includes acquisition of Guardian Hygiene Service, a pest control company.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Support services
• Buyouts
• China
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• Jade Alternative Investment Advisors