Waterland has partnered with Cork-based IIS and Secon Construction Services to form Ireland's largest specialist industrial insulation and cladding group, giving semiconductor, pharmaceutical and data centre manufacturers a single, scaled fabrication partner for critical thermal and cladding systems.

The combined group will support projects across life sciences, data centres, semiconductor manufacturing and food and beverage, and plans to accelerate expansion across Ireland and Europe while pursuing acquisitions.

IIS founder John Naughton will lead the combined group, while Secon founder Pat Mulcahy will retain an active leadership role; both companies' management teams will continue supporting customers. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals.

IIS, founded in 2010 and headquartered in Cork, fabricates and installs insulation and cladding solutions for data centres, life sciences, pharmaceutical, energy and semiconductor manufacturing, with operations in Ireland and European hubs in Denmark, Holland and Belgium.

Secon, founded in 2009 and also Cork-headquartered, specialises in industrial insulation for mechanical services across pharmaceutical, chemical, energy generation, semiconductor, food, beverage and data centre projects, employing more than 200 people through a dedicated metal cladding and thermal insulation workshop.

Donal Mac Nioclais, partner at Waterland Ireland, said IIS and Secon are outstanding Irish businesses with market-leading positions and strong reputations for delivering safely and reliably in demanding industrial environments, and that the combined group sees opportunities to expand organically and pursue strategic acquisitions in adjacent industrial services.

The deal reflects private equity consolidating specialist fabrication and installation contractors serving mission-critical manufacturing infrastructure, rather than manufacturers themselves, as semiconductor, pharma and data centre capex programmes drive demand for thermal and cladding specialists.

The timing tracks continued momentum across Ireland's manufacturing-adjacent capital investment, with IDA Ireland securing 190 investments and 10,410 committed jobs in the first half of 2026 alone, much of it concentrated in the sectors IIS and Secon already serve.

For the sector, the deal illustrates how manufacturing capex growth pulls investment into the specialist supply chain, insulation, cladding and fit-out, not just into the factories and cleanrooms themselves.

The wider signal for the sector is that fabrication and installation specialists serving cleanroom and thermal-critical manufacturing environments are becoming attractive scale-up targets because the manufacturers they serve continue investing heavily in new capacity.

Source: Waterland Private Equity / The Irish Times