Pascal Leurquin, founder of the Belgian group Evadix, passed away on 26 April 2020. This father of three children died at the age of 59 from the coronavirus, according to the Belgian newspaper L'Echo . Pascal Leurquin is known in the world of graphic arts for having taken over the Casterman web offset printing company, whose history dates back to the 18th century.
A graduate in commercial engineering from the Solvay Business School in Brussels, Pascal Leurquin, a Belgian born in Canada, started his career as a consultant for the audit and consultancy group Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC). Then, for almost ten years, he worked for the Solvay chemicals group in various financial functions in Brazil and Spain.
Return to Belgium in 1996
In 1996, he returned to Belgium and one year later joined the Casterman publishing and printing group, specialising in comic strips and children's books (Tintin, Martine, Corto Maltese, Ernest and Célestine...), as financial and administrative director.
In 1999, Flammarion took over the publishing and logistics division of the Belgian publisher, with plans to close the logistics business. Pascal Leurquin seized the opportunity: "I went to Charles-Henri Flammarion and said, 'I'm offering you a management buy-out. We take over the logistics, and you give us a three-year contract for the distribution of Casterman and Flammarion on the Belgian and Dutch markets so that we can get started' We negotiated the price and we got lancés?!" he explains to Christine de Bray in the book Do you want entreprendre?? Click (Edipro edition).
He founded Evadix in 2000 and took over Casterman in 2002
With three other executives, he founded Evadix in 2000 to take over Casterman's logistics. Then, he took over the routing activity of Casterman (Evadix DMS), and in 2002, the printing company then in great financial difficulty. Evadix grows and diversifies with, in particular, a flexo printing site in Romania and Evadix Etibel, in Belgium, specialising in the manufacture and printing of labels and packaging.
Although he initially succeeded in giving a new impetus to the printing industry, the Casterman Printing adventure came to an end in 2016. After several appearances before the Commercial Court, the printing plant is taken over by the Dutch group Emiel De Jong.
With the sale of Evadix Etibel in 2010, then of the Romanian subsidiary in 2017, Evadix is no longer in business.
But Pascal Leurquin doesn't stop there. He restructures the Belgian ready-to-wear stores Cameleon and the IT solutions provider Systemat. Since 2019, he has been co-directing Futura Capital, an investment fund specialising in business turnarounds.
