We acquire essential businesses that keep energy, water, and commodities moving.
We buy at intrinsic value, scale through acquisitions, and monetize the extrinsic.
Who we are…
Forward Partner is a private equity and merchant investing platform. We acquire lower-middle-market businesses and assets across energy, water, gas, waste, minerals and commodity markets, and build them into platforms through buy-and-build.
In these markets, value sits more and more in flexibility: the ability to store, shift, blend, reroute or dispatch when prices move. Thousands of owner-run companies control that flexibility. Few are set up to monetize it.
We buy control from founders and families, professionalize operations and add bolt-ons. Then we put commercial capability behind the assets: optimization, hedging, and offtake structured with trading houses and industrial buyers.
The result is two returns: an operating return we control, and a market return most buyout funds leave on the table. We invest with conviction, protect the people who built these businesses, and hold as long as value compounds.
— Charlie Gascon, Managing Director
Operators, investors, and commodity practitioners.
We have founded, built and scaled industrial services, energy and technology businesses, and advised the companies that run power, water and infrastructure markets.
Concentrated, thesis-driven investing.
We invest where physical assets meet volatile markets.
Private equity discipline: control buyouts and recapitalizations of profitable lower-middle-market companies, scaled through add-on acquisitions.
Merchant capability: we optimize, hedge, and commercialize the output (power, water, gas, recovered materials, and minerals) to capture spreads a pure operator cannot.
Energy
Commodity
Industrial
Waste
Sectors Focused
Essential assets and services across energy, water, gas, waste, minerals and commodity logistics.
Typically $5–15M in operating profit.
Leading with Integrity
We will always be transparent with our intentions and thoughtful in understanding your needs.
We promise a valuation in days and a closing within weeks.
Working with Owners
Buyouts and recapitalizations as your primary capital partner, followed by add-on acquisitions.
If we are a good fit, you shape your role post-close.
A future-proof, permanent home.
We bring long-term capital, operating talent, software and a trading mindset to the businesses that keep essential resources moving, and commit to protecting their culture and teams for decades.
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PE, Growth Equity, and SaaS Rollups are share-renters who flip and aggregate businesses to benefit their own economics, often at the expense of your business's long-term health.
Not us. We focus on permanent capital appreciation via long-term growth in companies. We hold investments over decades and prioritizing true value growth vs. exit arbitrate.
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Innovation is the outcome of the right strategy, processes, and culture—and our rigorous framework encompasses it all. The GoFWD Business System brings our innovation strategy, organization, talent, and culture to life. Our system of continuous improvement and the unique culture we bring to a company is what makes it all work.
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Our team has scaled hundreds of industrial technology companies over the past three decades. From being founders with 1 employee to leading global Fortune 500, building managerial capabilities at scale is what we know.
We bring access to a global network of top-tier executives while building up your team into future industry leaders with best-in-class capability-building programs.