The Mittelstand as long-term owner

Bajío Ventures · June 2026

A fifteen-year energy contract is, above all, a bet on who will still own the plant fifteen years from now. A credit rating measures whether the client can pay today. The ownership structure says something different and, for an asset that does not move, more important: whether the client will still be there.

KOSTAL arrived in Mexico in 1973. Fifty years later it is still a family company, runs four plants in the country —three in Querétaro— with about 3,400 employees, and marked the anniversary by opening a new plant for electric-vehicle components. That is the client profile any infrastructure investor would want across the table.

What sits behind the word Mittelstand

The Mittelstand is not just a size bracket. It is a form of ownership:

• 88% of private companies in Germany are family-controlled; they employ 58% of private-sector workers and generate 46% of its sales (ZEW for the Foundation for Family Businesses, 2025).
• Germany’s small and medium-sized enterprises number 3.87 million, with 33 million employees and an average equity ratio of 30.7% in 2024 (KfW).
• Some of the largest belong to a foundation that cannot easily sell them. The Robert Bosch Foundation holds about 94% of Robert Bosch GmbH; the Zeppelin Foundation, about 94% of ZF. Both operate plants in Mexico.

Each form of ownership brings a different horizon, and a different risk for whoever signs with it:

Ownership	Typical horizon	Main risk for a long contract
Foundation (Bosch, ZF)	Indefinite	The group reorganises where it produces
Family, unlisted (KOSTAL, Brose, REHAU, Webasto, Dräxlmaier)	Generational	Succession
Family with a financial partner, or listed	Mixed	Sale of control
Private equity fund	4–7 years	Planned exit
Listed group without an anchor shareholder	Annual or quarterly	Plant closure or consolidation

What the Bajío shows: tenure and reinvestment on site

German family firms in the Bajío do not just arrive: they stay and expand where they already are. KOSTAL has been in Mexico for five decades and opened its newest plant in Querétaro in 2023. Brose arrived in Querétaro in 1993 and now has three plants there. REHAU arrived in Apaseo el Grande and Celaya in 1993 and opened a third plant in Celaya in December 2023. Webasto, still family-owned since its founding in the early twentieth century, expanded its Irapuato plant in 2023 to build electric-vehicle chargers.

For an on-site generation project, that track record is worth more than a clause: it is evidence that the company decides in decades and reinvests in the same building. The contrast is plain to see. The COMPAS plant in Aguascalientes, a joint venture between two listed groups, announced its closure in October 2025 and built its last car in May 2026.

The risk is not credit, it is a change of owner

Family ownership is a long horizon, not a guarantee. Three cases in the region show it:

• HELLA was controlled by the Hueck family from 1923. In January 2022 the family pool sold its 60% to Faurecia, now FORVIA, which is the majority owner.
• Grammer, from Bavaria, is now controlled by China’s Ningbo Jifeng. Its Querétaro plant is the group’s largest.
• Leoni, with a cable plant in Apaseo el Grande, passed to the control of Luxshare, also Chinese.

And the wave is only starting. According to KfW, 545,000 German SMEs are looking to settle their succession before the end of 2029, and 569,000 plan to close. 57% of owners are 55 or older, and 47% of those planning to close say nobody in the family wants to take over. Most are small firms with no plants in Mexico; what matters is that the question of who comes next is now on the table across the whole Mittelstand.

Add to that the energy squeeze in Germany. In the German chambers of commerce’s 2025 barometer, 59% of industrial firms with more than 500 employees said they are restricting or planning to restrict production in Germany because of energy costs. That does not change who owns the company, but it does change where it chooses to produce. The Bajío plant can gain volume or lose priority within the group.

Four adjustments to how a project is structured

If the counterparty is a long-term owner, the project should be designed for that owner and for whoever comes next:

1. Offer the option to own. A company that funds itself with equity and thinks in decades evaluates a solar or storage system like any other plant asset: by its cost over its whole life, not by the first month’s savings. Alongside a supply contract, offer a lease with a purchase option or a transfer of the asset in an agreed year.
2. Sell to headquarters, not only to the plant. The plant manager can propose; a fifteen-year commitment is approved by the group in Germany. Technical documentation, group standards and the conversation with corporate finance should be ready from the start, and in their language.
3. Tie the contract to the site, not to the legal entity. Assignment and change-of-control clauses, an early-buyout schedule and parent-company guarantees. If the plant changes hands, the asset and the contract should go with it.
4. Do due diligence on the owner, not just the client. Who controls the company, and which generation is in charge? Is there a foundation or a financial partner? When was the last investment on the site? What share of the group’s output comes from this plant? These are the same questions as in due diligence on a developer, applied from the buyer’s side.

What the Bajío can learn

In Bavaria’s hidden champions we noted that the region hosts the Mittelstand’s plants, but not its ownership. There is a second lesson. What makes these clients valuable —their own capital, a horizon of decades, reinvestment on site— is exactly what a typical private equity fund lacks, entering an asset with a five-to-seven-year exit.

A twenty-five-year energy asset needs owners who think like its clients. The Bajío has the clients. What it has to build are the owners.

Sources: Mexico Industry, KOSTAL’s 50 years in Mexico, Oct-2023 · Stiftung Familienunternehmen / ZEW, economic importance of family firms, 2025 · KfW SME Panel 2025 · Robert Bosch Stiftung, ownership of Robert Bosch GmbH, Dec-2020 · ZF Friedrichshafen, ownership · Mexico Industry, Brose in Querétaro · REHAU, Celaya 3 plant · Webasto, the group · Webasto, Guanajuato plant · Dräxlmaier in Mexico · Expansión, COMPAS closure, Oct-2025 · Autocosmos, COMPAS’s last car, May-2026 · HELLA, FAURECIA new majority shareholder, Jan-2022 · HELLA, ownership history · Mexico Industry, Grammer Querétaro · Leoni, Luxshare deal completed · KfW, SME succession monitoring 2025, Jan-2026 · DIHK, Energy Transition Barometer 2025

Bajío Ventures — a Mexican energy-infrastructure investment group based in Guanajuato: capital, a data platform on the region’s industrial base, and a German industrial channel, with its own advisory presence in Berlin.