The private equity fund Realza Capital, based in Madrid, has announced the purchase of the majority of shares in the artisan bread oven chain Turris from the company's current partners, its founder, the baker from Badalona Xavier Barriga, and Manel Sellarés, former Europastry executive. Realza Capital will control just over 50% and the management company Suma Capital ---through the Growth Fund II fund--- and Enerhold, the investment arm of businessman Jacinto Casanovas, also remain in the capital with minority stakes. Xavier Barriga and Manel Sellarés will continue to be reference partners and hold a position on the board of directors.
With its entry, the Madrid-based management company wants to design an expansion plan that, starting in Madrid, should take the bakery chain to the entire Spanish State in the coming years. At the same time, it will continue to expand its presence in Barcelona and municipalities in the metropolitan area and its surroundings. "We will contribute our business experience to the Turris management team in its ambitious growth plan based on its unique and differential business model," said Martín González del Valle, partner at Realza Capital.
Currently, Turris has 25 bakeries, all owned in the Barcelona demarcation and with a significant presence in the city ---with 20 stores---, employing some 300 workers. Some of the establishments, such as one of the three in Sant Cugat del Vallès, are located inside Ametller Origen stores. The workshop has a range of more than 200 products, mainly consisting of various varieties of high-quality bread, pastries, and savory pastries.
The Turris establishments respond to the vocation and tradition of baker of its promoter, Xavier Barriga, who learned the trade from his father, in the bakery that the family ran in Badalona. At the beginning of the first decade of the 2000s, after traveling through Europe to learn more in depth about the trade, and tired of seeing how the quality of the bread that could be bought in ovens and other types of establishments was being lost, Barriga launched to create a new concept of bakery, where the workshop is an essential piece and where the entire artisan process for making bread and pastries is done in full view of the customer. We must go back to 2008, to find the first Turris establishment in Barcelona, on Calle Aribau.
In the new stage, the executive management of the business will remain in the hands of the current general director, Patxi Fernández, who joined the company in 2019. "We believe that the financial partners, together with the support of our founders, will help us to progress decisively in the new stage of growth that the company will face at a national level," Fernández assured.
In recent years, growth has been significant for Turris, reaching a turnover of 20 million euros in 2021, with an operating result of 5 million euros and a growth during the last 4 years above 25% annually, favored by the rise of healthy eating based on fresh, artisanal and very high-quality products, according to the company. This favorable evolution is what has determined, among other things, that all shareholders of the bakery chain remain linked to the company.