29 Jul 2009 Acquistion of CeDo
Rutland Partners, the UK private equity partnership, announces that it has exchanged contracts to acquire the CeDo group of companies (“CeDo”) from DELTON AG, Bad Homburg / Germany (“Delton”) for an undisclosed sum. The transaction is conditional on merger control clearances and is expected to complete within three months. Full details of the acquisition and its terms will be announced following completion.
CeDo is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of household disposables, manufacturing both own-label and proprietary products such as refuse sacks, bin liners and other speciality kitchen and household disposable products including nappy sacks, cling film and aluminium foil. It holds strong supply relationships with the majority of Europe’s largest supermarkets and discounters.
The business has a strong focus on the UK, German, and French markets whilst sales in Eastern Europe have also grown rapidly in recent years. The business produces and sells product mainly under own-label arrangements and also operates the Paclan and Poly-Lina brands. The business is profitable and cash generative on sales of around £185 million (€210 million).
Rutland will implement a wide-ranging plan of operational improvements across the business. These will include a concerted drive to further optimise manufacturing efficiency in all plants, to reduce costs and focus closely on managing working capital. These initiatives will help improve financial performance and enhance CeDo’s ability to benefit from its status as the market’s lowest cost producer.
The company has pioneered and will continue to drive the environmentally friendly practice of including increasingly large proportions of post-consumer recycled plastic in its plastic products at its three manufacturing plants in the UK, Poland and China. This has been made possible by the high grade tailored output produced from CeDo’s own post-consumer plastic recycling facility in the Netherlands.
Rutland will invest from its £322 million fund, Rutland Fund II, to support the acquisition with the balance of the funding coming from debt facilities provided by Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance and Indigo Capital LLP. CeDo will be Rutland’s third investment from Rutland Fund II.
Commenting on the investment, Ben Slatter of Rutland said:
“We believe that with Rutland’s support CeDo can implement its strategic plan and build considerably on its already strong market position. We are confident that together with CeDo’s management team we will be able to deliver significant operational improvements to the business.”
The Rutland transaction team comprised Nick Morrill, Ben Slatter, David Wingfield and Tristan Craddock. Ben Slatter led the deal for Rutland and he and David Wingfield will join the Board of CeDo after Closing.