Following the successful delisting of Torre Industries from the JSE in April 2019, the business was successfully separated into Torre Analytical Services (TAS) acquired by Ethos Mid Market Fund I (EMMF) and Torre Industrial (TI) acquired by Apex Partners.

In partnership with EMMF, TAS has now been rebranded as the Synerlytic Group, comprising three offerings: WearCheck – a condition monitoring business, which provides proactive asset maintenance management services across a wide variety of industries such as mining, earth-moving, construction, manufacturing, automotive, power generation, aviation and marine, via a number of specialised analytical methodologies such as fuel and lubricant analysis, vibration and balancing none destructive testing and rope condition assessment; AMIS – an international manufacturer and supplier of a wide range of matrix-matched Certified Reference Materials (CRMs); and Setpoint Laboratories – an analytical chemistry laboratory offering a wide range of analytical tests on PGMs and Gold, Light Elements, Uranium and Rare earths, and Water.

Edward Pitsi, Managing Partner of Ethos Mid Market Fund I, said:

“We identified an exciting opportunity to separate TAS and TI through the Torre delisting, as the two businesses had little to no synergies as a group. Once liberated from the group structure, we have been able to optimise Synerlytic’s capital structure, to support our long-term growth strategy.” 

Jon Hillary, Synerlytic CEO, added: “Synerlytic is the TIC market-leader in Africa.  We offer our clients mission critical oil condition monitoring for predictive maintenance, CRMs needed for quality assurance & control, and analytical chemistry services across various industries. With 8 labs across South Africa and a further 13 labs in 11 additional countries in Africa and the Middle East, we have an unrivalled regional footprint – even for clients in remote locations – resulting in impressive turnaround times.  

Together with the EMMF, we intend to unlock synergies available as a result of our new autonomous structure.  We also intend to diversify our geographic footprint through executing an organic and acquisitive growth strategy. Ultimately our new shareholders are aligned to our mission of ensuring our services exceed our customers’ expectations.”

EMMF has an approximately 90% shareholding of Synerlytic, with management holding the remainder. 

Tabane Matheolane, Principal of Ethos Mid Market Fund I, said: “Our partnership and collaboration with Jon and his world-class leadership team, will set Synerlytic up to operate more optimally and offer crucial services to its very well-established and growing customer base.” 

The Fund was launched in 2016 and targets investments into high-growth companies that will benefit from the team’s differentiated capabilities to actively optimise strategy, operations and capital structures in partnership with management. 

The Fund is majority-owned and managed by Black individuals and is thus able to confer significant empowerment credentials to underlying portfolio companies. 

Other EMMF investments include: Autozone, Twinsaver, Eazi Access, Echotel, MTN Zakhele Futhi, Kevro and Gammatek.