Acquisitions abound across all activities
15 Jan 2000
Perhaps it's that time of year again, with companies wanting to start the new year with a bang, but last month recorded a number of company acquisitions across all sectors of the process industry suppliers' market.
* In the fluids handling sector, the main news was the acquisition by the Swedish Johnson Pump International of the modular pump activities of Stork, the Netherlands-based company.
Besides the Netherlands, Stork Pumps has operations in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Although a name change is expected later in the year, Stork Pumps UK remains under the guidance of managing director Peter Staddon. Commenting on the acquisition, he said: `I am pleased that the contribution we have made in the UK has been recognised by the new owners who have given us every support in our recent move to much larger premises in Crawley.' The newly enlarged Johnson Pump now has sales of around £70million.
* On the monitoring scene, the industrial instrumentation company Servomex has taken over the Montec Buhler Group, one of Europe's leading manufacturers of environmental monitoring instrumentation. Building on the strength of the Buhler name in Europe, the group - now renamed Buhler Montec - will continue to operate autonomously from its offices in England, France and Germany, and through its worldwide distributors and agents.
* Also in the monitoring sector, the gas emissions and ambient air monitoring businesses of Rotork Analysis have been acquired by Signal Instrument. A new company, Signal Ambitek, will concentrate on the ambient market, while a new Signal Systems Division will look after continuous emissions monitoring systems.
* In process engineering design, Aspen Technology has acquired Bechtel's PIMS (process industries modelling system) business. The proprietary PIMS software is used for economic planning and scheduling based on large linear programming models. AspenTech views the acquisition as a strategic move, complementing its port-folio of on-line optimisation and control software.
