Pizza De Manosque

The high-end frozen pizza specialist wants to double its market share in France by opening up its share capital to Crédit Mutuel Equity, a subsidiary of the Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale Group, which is investing €2.1 million in the company. Headed by Philippe Leplomb, the Manosque-based company generates sales of €13m and has around 50 employees.

Founded in 1991, the company was taken over in 2007 by Philippe Leplomb, who named it "La Pizza de Manosque". Under his aegis, the company has seen strong growth and adopted a more upscale focus following a number of investments such as the acquisition of a fully automated wood-fired oven. With 100% of production sold to supermarkets and hypermarkets, the brand controls 3.4% of the frozen pizza market, with own-label products accounting for 60% of its business.

Philippe Leplomb sources high quality fresh and regional products himself, such as tomato sauce from Provence or Label Rouge flour from Montpellier. As a result, La Pizza de Manosque is the only brand authorised to sell pizzas with "Label Rouge" quality assurance in supermarkets and hypermarkets. It offers a wide range of products, with around 50 items and different types of doughs: sourdough, Label Rouge dough, stuffed crust (melted cheese inserted by machine and dough folded by hand), organic (organic flour and salt) and bread dough. The company produces around 5 million pizzas a year at a 5,200 m2 plant.

On the strength of this success, the director has strengthened the company's equity with Crédit Mutuel Equity (formerly CM-CIC Investissement), in order to diversify its distribution channels to include restaurants, away-from-home and international activities. "Direct selling to the general public is also one of our expansion plans, with the opening of automatic pizza distributors, the first of which has been announced for late April in Manosque. We are planning to open around 20 in France within the next three years. This strengthening of our equity will allow us to roll out an advertising campaign targeting the general public, primarily via social media, and also identify growth drivers in other countries, capitalising on Crédit Mutuel Equity's network and expertise," explains Philippe Leplomb.

"La Pizza de Manosque has become a sure thing in an ultra-competitive market thanks to its strategic capital expenditure, premium positioning that has found its client base, true capacity for innovation - particularly in new recipes - and high level of flexibility. We were attracted by the highly skilled management team, which convinced us to support this regional SME in its expansion," add Laurent Vasselin and Clara Zimbris at Crédit Mutuel Equity.

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