The Cap Sud group based in Nord-Isère and specialised in the research into and the installation and maintenance of photovoltaic plants , as well as the management of assets in this sector, was given a financial boost at the start of 2019 when the Leclercq family, founders of Decathlon, acquired a stake in the group to help it with its future development.
Cap Sud has been a leading French player in the photovoltaic solar power sector since 2006, and last year decided to increase its equity to achieve annual growth of more than 50% in its historical business activities and to develop new activities focused on photovoltaics.
“My company wants to develop increasingly big and more ambitious projects with the arrival of a new trusted partner with a stake in our business. The regular discussions between the Leclercq family, our staff and myself, quickly confirmed that we had made the right choice,” says Stéphane Gilli, founder and CEO of Cap Sud.
Decathlon also equips its store or its logistics centre sites with photovoltaic solar plants on buildings or on canopies.
For Benoit Lahache, a family member of the Leclercq family investment structure, the acquirement of a stake in Cap Sud embodies the desire “to take concrete action faced with climate change by investing in a pioneering and ambitious company specialised in renewable energies“.
In this same context of developing its activities, the Cap Sud group had already obtained funding of €15 million a year ago. In addition, it recently beat a speed record in crowd-funding by collecting €1.1 million from 697 contributors in just over six days on the Lendosphere platform for a project to install 11 solar roofs on agricultural hangars in France, whose combined annual output of electricity is expected to be more than a million MWh.
With a workforce of approximately 60 employees, the Cap Sud group has installed 78 MWc of photovoltaic solar energy to date, including 20 MWc in 2017. Since its creation in 2006, it has installed 700 solar roofs on agricultural hangars. It currently has a portfolio of 78 MWc of projects under development and manages approximately 1200 sites in operation/under maintenance.