The CEO’s View — Johan Ihrfelt

Welcome to Peas Industries

Over the last few years, there has been a substantial increase in attention for companies and technologies aiming to create a sustainable society. We established our first companies with this purpose at heart 15 years ago. It takes time to create sustainable, wise organisations, verify technologies and develop business models that will be sustainable in the long term. Our companies are at different stages on this journey, but they all have one thing in common: lofty ambitions to drive change towards sustainability and circularity in their respective sectors.

Over the past year, our companies have built more wind power, produced more biogas and biofertiliser, grown more leafy greens, installed a large number of solar cells and geothermal energy systems and produced more renewable energy than ever before.

Turnover for the group increased from SEK 5,160 million to SEK 5,460 million, while operating profit increased from SEK 353 million to SEK 386 million. For us, and hopefully the rest of the world as well, our figures are evidence of how sustainable enterprise can be combined with good profitability.

Given these experiences, we want to do more. We are seeking the greatest challenges. Those which have the most positive impact on society and which therefore have the potential to create major commercial success. We cannot be the best at everything. The fields of renewable energy, circular bioeconomy, food technologies and socially transformative companies are therefore of interest to us and we would be happy to make more investments in these fields. We also started making minority investments in companies in 2020. After more than 25 years of entrepreneurship in technology and sustainability, we have established a number of companies, from start-up to billion-dollar net sales, and we are now sought after as investors by other entrepreneurs who share our vision. Giving back is stimulating and rewarding at the same time. The corporate journey is rarely undertaken alone, and we have good experience of bringing in and working with long-term ownership groups.

We believe it is important to ensure social sustainability within the companies that we own. We are convinced that non-hierarchical, inclusive, open and bold corporate cultures are a necessity in order to be relevant in today’s society. Moreover, they are a must if further business innovation and development are to be achieved.

A lot of effort is required to reach the success of a larger company. We can provide experience and the resources available to us in order to make it happen. After all, our sole purpose is to create enterprising that is wiser and even more entrepreneurial with the long-term approach.

Johan Ihrfelt, CEO Peas Industries