Consulting

Why con­sult with sbh4 GmbH to devel­op your busi­ness?

Very sim­ple, because you either need some fresh ideas or you want to test your exist­ing plans with an objec­tive sec­ond opin­ion. 

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As a busi­ness con­sul­tant com­ing from an oper­a­tional back­ground, I offer very prac­ti­cal and prag­mat­ic con­sult­ing. My approach is ‘down-to-earth’, I try to use a jar­gon-free vocab­u­lary and avoid process-heavy method­olo­gies. The scope, bud­get and timescale of each engage­ment is cus­tomised to your require­ments.

I take invest­ment trans­ac­tion sup­port engage­ments on fixed time­lines and with clear­ly defined deliv­er­ables. I also take long-term ‘oper­at­ing part­ner’ engage­ments where the nature of my sup­port can evolve flex­i­bly, accord­ing to the project require­ments and the time com­mit­ment and inten­si­ty can also change.

Publications, gaphics & videos

Consulting Case Studies: Taking a closer look

I have con­duct­ed more than 40 M&A and invest­ment due dili­gence engage­ments since 2017. These were a mix­ture of buy-side, sell-side, com­mer­cial, tech­ni­cal, oper­a­tions and EHS assign­ments. Pri­or to work­ing as a con­sul­tant, I was respon­si­ble for inte­grat­ing spe­cial­ty gas­es busi­ness­es acquired from Air­gas, Prax­air, Air Prod­ucts, Gaspro, AGA and BOC into The Linde Group. Hav­ing seen the M&A process from the out­side and the inside and the prepa­ra­tions and the post M&A inte­gra­tion I have a very round­ed and prag­mat­ic view of the full M&A process and its asso­ci­at­ed syn­er­gies, oppor­tu­ni­ties, and risks. In 2022 I was engaged by an investor to com­plete a buy-side tech­ni­cal and EHS due dili­gence of a green-field site inte­grat­ed hydro­gen, ammo­nia, CO2, heli­um, F-gas­es, spe­cial­ty gas­es and indus­tri­al gas­es facil­i­ty.

Pao­lo Fari­na, Con­sul­tant and Tech­ni­cal Gas Lead at Nex­ant, Sep­tem­ber 2020:

“Stephen was a fan­tas­tic project man­ag­er on a recent refrig­er­ant gas­es M&A project we under­took. His direct and hon­est man­age­ment phi­los­o­phy was refresh­ing and cer­tain­ly made a chal­leng­ing project excit­ing and enjoy­able”.

With a career span­ning 27 years in the Indus­tri­al Gas­es busi­ness, work­ing for BOC and Linde, I have an inti­mate knowl­edge of this indus­try. I was active in all major busi­ness areas: ton­nage pipeline sup­ply, bulk process gas­es and pack­aged cylin­der gas­es. Over that time, I spent 15 years in glob­al strate­gic lead­er­ship roles and was heav­i­ly involved in acquir­ing and inte­grat­ing busi­ness from Air Prod­ucts, Air­gas, AGA, Gaspro, Math­e­son, Prax­air and Spec­tra Gas­es. I have also worked close­ly with Air Liq­uide joint ven­ture com­pa­nies and com­pet­ed with Mess­er, Math­e­son Tri Gas and count­less oth­ers. So, I have an insight into almost every major indus­tri­al gas­es com­pa­ny oper­at­ing in the glob­al are­na today. For 18 years I was involved in Spe­cial­ty Gas­es com­mer­cial, busi­ness and sup­ply chain roles at a nation­al, region­al and glob­al lev­el. In the Spe­cial­ty Gas­es prod­uct group, my exper­tise is prob­a­bly unpar­al­leled in terms of breadth and depth of expo­sure. Many of my insights have been pub­lished in a diverse range of busi­ness and indus­try jour­nals world­wide.

The pace of inno­va­tion is intense in com­pressed gas cylin­ders for hydro­gen, indus­tri­al gas­es, and fuel gas­es. The expan­sion of the hydro­gen econ­o­my has pulled for car­bon fibre type 4 com­pos­ite cylin­ders for sta­t­ic stor­age, on-board stor­age, and hydro­gen dis­tri­b­u­tion. Type 1, 2 and 3 cylin­ders have also enjoyed a peri­od of growth and glass fibre wrapped type 2 cylin­ders and type 4 cylin­ders are cost effec­tive alter­na­tives to car­bon fibre for HRS and hydro­gen dis­tri­b­u­tion appli­ca­tions. I have advised a region­al gas­es com­pa­ny on the busi­ness ben­e­fits, com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy and tech­ni­cal solu­tions for cylin­der prod­uct devel­op­ment. Valve and cylin­der man­u­fac­tur­ers have also sought my advice, includ­ing growth strat­e­gy devel­op­ment with work­shop facil­i­ta­tion and mar­ket eval­u­a­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, insti­tu­tion­al investors and PE firms reg­u­lar­ly seek my opin­ions on com­pa­nies in this sec­tor to sup­port val­u­a­tions and invest­ment deci­sions.

With 16 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing hands-on with spe­cial­ty gas­es at BOC and Linde, I have deep and broad expo­sure to lead­ing instru­men­ta­tion OEMs and many kinds of gas analy­sis tech­niques. My expe­ri­ence also extends to the mar­kets where these gas analy­sers are used and the leg­is­la­tion changes and indus­try dynam­ics that are dri­ving the growth of sev­er­al appli­ca­tions in this sec­tor. This exper­tise has attract­ed major glob­al instru­men­ta­tion sup­pli­ers to seek my advice. On their behalf, I have under­tak­en mar­ket research for M&A activ­i­ties. My con­sult­ing ser­vices have also been used to devel­op and exe­cute mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in this sec­tor and devel­op sales train­ing mate­ri­als. I also fre­quent­ly write jour­nal arti­cles on health, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal top­ics that rely on fixed and portable gas detec­tion equip­ment. Fur­ther­more, research ana­lysts and investors reg­u­lar­ly seek my opin­ion about var­i­ous instru­men­ta­tion OEMs to enable accu­rate val­u­a­tions and guide their invest­ment deci­sions.

Increas­ing­ly, busi­ness­es are com­ing to sbh4 to sup­port their decar­bon­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy. In Europe, each M&A trans­ac­tion must be accom­pa­nied by an ESG due dili­gence. So, com­pa­nies in PE own­er­ship are keen to demon­strate that they have a robust decar­bon­i­sa­tion action plan and are mak­ing progress towards it. They know that achiev­ing a good val­u­a­tion mul­ti­ple depends on their proven path­way to decar­bon­i­sa­tion. Our role ranges from decar­bon­i­sa­tion equip­ment tech­nol­o­gy selec­tion to bud­getary cost esti­mates for the required tran­si­tion to find­ing sources and sup­pli­ers for car­bon-neu­tral ener­gy vec­tors. Busi­ness oper­a­tions in emerg­ing mar­kets are also moti­vat­ed to decar­bonise due to pres­sure from inter­na­tion­al cus­tomers and the desire from pri­vate­ly owned busi­ness­es to sim­ply “do the right thing”.

For much of my career at BOC Gas­es and Linde Gas, I was respon­si­ble for the Spe­cial­ty Gas­es port­fo­lio glob­al­ly. This prod­uct group is seen as a major growth engine with­in the wider indus­tri­al and med­ical gas­es indus­try. Busi­ness devel­op­ment and plan­ning for growth were per­ma­nent­ly on the agen­da. The skills that I learned are of direct rel­e­vance to indus­tri­al gas­es busi­ness­es that wish to grow in this area and trans­ferrable to relat­ed indus­tri­al sec­tors where the mar­kets were sim­i­lar such as gas analy­sers and gas detec­tion equip­ment.

Since leav­ing Linde, I have sup­port­ed sev­er­al com­pa­nies to plan and exe­cute growth strate­gies that will increase their expo­sure to the hydro­gen econ­o­my and decar­bon­i­sa­tion in gen­er­al. The process gen­er­al­ly fol­lows a route of sit­u­a­tion­al analy­sis, mar­ket assess­ment and busi­ness devel­op­ment. The actions often focus around adjust­ments in the prod­uct ranges and strate­gic focus to exploit growth oppor­tu­ni­ties. The inter­nal prod­uct and process changes have fre­quent­ly been sup­port­ed by inter­nal train­ing and exter­nal mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­grammes.

Client references available on request

We are proud of our work and client feed­back. If you would like to review a client rec­om­men­da­tion let­ter relat­ed to one of the above projects, please get in touch.