Trescal: Made to measure

If you thought metrology had something to do with the weather or your star sign, you are not alone. It’s a sector not many are familiar with, yet in many ways it makes the world go around and its importance to the manufacturing industry cannot be overstated. Everything from the planes that fly us around the world, to the kettles we make our preferred morning brew with rely on it to function. In short, it is the science that produces standardized parts and identical pieces of technology, allowing modern society to run like clockwork.

Calibration across the nations
Trescal hit the ground running in 2023, with the announcement of five overseas acquisitions: Korea’s SCTI, Ireland’s Delta-P Monitoring Technology, Australian outfit ASG X-Technologies, Nordic Service Group in Scandinavia and Malasia’s ICT. Combined, these newcomers to the Trescal family of companies add some €25 million in annual turnover to the group.  

Conquering new territory is in the DNA of Trescal, whose corporate headquarters are located near Paris’ Orly interational airport. The company was founded in 1999 when French industrial gases supplier Air Liquide created a metrology division after investing in Metrotech. The name is a composite of the surname of the Henri Tresca, the father of the metric system, scales of measurement, and "cal" as in calibration. Having quickly scaled up in Europe, Trescal then set its sights on conquering the global market which, almost a quarter of a century on, it has largely achieved. Today, Trescal employs 4,400 people across the planet.

Trescal carries out 3.3 million precision engineering operations annually for 70,000 companies

In 2007, Astorg Partners organized the carve out of Air Liquide’s metrology division, in partnership with Trescal’s management. A decade and a half on, its has 30 labs and 700 staff serving 15,000 clients. Now an independent service-provider, the company is making well-measured strides in North America, Asia and Australasia. Trescal carries out 3.3 million precision engineering operations for 70,000 companies is sectors such as aerospace, automobile, pharmaceuticals, electronics and telecoms, including 27,000 repairs across 150,000 types of instruments.

Engaging potential
2022 saw a fresh injection of capital into Trescal when the Swedish private equity company EQT Partners acquired a 75% share of the company from the Canadian pension fund Omers, which had itself bought into Trescal to the tune of €670 million in 2017 and subsequently carried out 47 acquisitions.

“Trescal is already a major player on the international stage and we look forward to further strengthening Trescal’s market position in North America and developing the company’s presence in Asia,” explained Thomas Rajzbaum, managing director of EQT, last December.

Although its services are in high demand, Trescal has designs on acquiring complementary expertise in the life sciences and telecoms sectors. In doing so the company should ensure its metronomic growth continues. In 2021 turnover stood at €370 million, compared to €270 million in 2017.