Express & Star

Victoria confirms tile firm talks

Acquisitive carpet and floorings manufacturer Victoria has confirmed it is looking at a possible deal for a Spanish ceramic tiling company.

Published
Victoria's headquarters in Kidderminster

It comes just a fortnight after Victoria announced a £50 million takeover of Italian ceramic flooring manufacturer, Ceramiche Serra.

This time Kidderminster-based Victoria has confirmed it is in talks with Keraben Grupo, which makes flooring and wall tiles in Barcelona, where it employs around 600 people.

In a brief statement to the City, Victoria said a deal with Keraben was one of a number of opportunities the company was currently assessing.

Victoria said: "The board has previously stated that it is part of its growth strategy to make highly selective acquisitions and therefore it is frequently in discussions with a number of parties. The board can confirm that it is evaluating a number of opportunities including this one.

"In the event that the potential acquisition were to proceed it would be classified as a substantial transaction for the purposes of the AIM Rules for Companies. However, there is no guarantee that it will proceed.

"A further announcement will be made in due course as appropriate."

Keraban Grupo operates three main brands – Keraben, Metropol and CasaInfinita – and its products are sold in 120 countries.

It would consolidate October's deal for Serra, which was the company's first move into the ceramic flooring market, which is the largest flooring sector in the world.

The Victoria board said at the time it believed that there was significant opportunity for further acquisitions in the sector.

Victoria chairman Geoff Wilding said that after the Serra deal, "nearly 40 per cent of Victoria’s earnings will come from outside the UK – continuing our transformation into a genuinely international flooring business.

“Shareholders will recall that we signalled our intention to expand into hard flooring some 12 months ago and subsequently acquired our first hard-flooring business, Australian manufacturer/distributor Dunlop Flooring, in January of this year. Since then we have conducted extensive due diligence on the sector in Europe and explored a multitude of potential opportunities, as well as recruiting a senior, director-level hard flooring expert in May of this year. Given this planning and preparatory work, Serra is the first of a number of acquisitions we expect to make in the ceramic flooring sector.

"It has been some eight months since our last acquisition, Avalon/Grass Inc in the Netherlands, which has now been fully integrated within Victoria and is contributing to our performance. Our strategy of achieving scale through acquisitions and using that scale to extract operational synergies continues to deliver value for the group and we look forward to developing the Serra business as part of Victoria.”

On completion of the Serra deal, the enlarged group will have 1,800 employees and operate from more than 10 sites in the UK, five in Australia, two in the Netherlands, one in Belgium and two in Italy.