US Company Buys Omagh Engineering Firm For £22 Million

Omagh engineering company Telestack has been bought over by US based multi-national Astec Industries in a deal worth £22 million.

Based on the outskirts of the town, Telestack specialises in material handling systems for the port, aggregate and mining industries.

Since its establishment in May 1999, the company has grown into a global exporter operating across six continents. Just six months ago, the firm unveiled a £3.1 million expansion to its operation, creating 40 new jobs.

This week, Nasdaq-listed Astec Industries, who are based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, announced it had completed a $36million acquisition of Telestack.

Malachy Gribben, who took over the ownership of the company in 2008 along with Adrian McCutcheon, confirmed all 100 jobs at the firm are safe and stated that the take-over will accelerate the rapid growth of the company.

“We have owned the business since May 2008 and we have had ambitious growth plans for the business for over the next five to ten years, which was going to take a lot of investment and one of the drivers behind the acquisition is that it allows us to accelerate our growth development plans, which obviously secures the jobs immediately here.”

TURNOVER

In 2013, Telestack had a turnover of £16.3m, delivering a pre-tax profit of £2.6m. In the same period, Astec had a turnover of almost $1billion.

“Whilst as an independent company Telestack was financially strong, the high profile blue chip customers we are dealing with around the world now feel this is a very good thing for them,” said Malachy.

“It cements their confidence that we are part of a large global multi-national company, which is financially strong, has no debts and has a global footprint around the world.”

Last October the engineering company announced details of a three year growth plan. The commercial director said the buy over will rapidly speed up that process.

“It’s good for us as a company, it’s good for employees, it’s also good for the local economy because we source a lot of our components and fabrications in the local economy here and the more business we can bring in, then the more business we can bring to them.”

STAYING ON

Malachy stated that he will remain with the company along with Adrian McCutcheon.

“It was critical to the deal that they wanted us to stay on and we wanted to stay on. All management will be staying on, including myself and Adrian.

“It’s been a great run for us. Since we bought the business in 2008, we have invested a lot of time and money in it. We have grown the business four-fold in the last five or six years and we want to keep going on with that rapid growth path and this transaction helps us to do that, so it’s great news for everybody.”

Astec Industries is a leading manufacturer of equipment for asphalt road building, aggregate processing, oil, gas and water well drilling and wood processing.

Mr Gribben said the attraction of Telestack was the doors the Omagh company will open for them around the globe, particularly in seaports and river terminals.

“The core part of our business is loading and unloading of boats with coal, iron ore or grain and that’s a market sector that Astec are not into, so that’s one of the attractions for them, to expand their portfolio.”

Source: ulsterherald.com