Latium merged with Cheltenham firm
LATIUM Holdings, the window-making business owned by Brian Kennedy, has merged with Cheltenham-based Epwin Group to create a new group with a turnover of around £275m.
The company will be led by a new senior board that includes Kennedy but is chaired by Epwin Group founder Jim Rawson, who said that the merger would not lead to “any significant changes” to the group’s operational structure.
The deal brings together Latium’s window-manufacturing companies Spectus, Kestrel-BCE and glass processing business CET with Epwin brands Epwin brands Profile 22, Swish Window and Door Systems, Swish Building Products and Sierra. It also creates a business with 2,500 employees.
Mr Rawson said: This is a major opportunity for the UK building products industry. In bringing together many of its leading businesses, in a British-run, British-owned group, we have the resource to invest in individual brands, product innovation and service, grow our business and most importantly, support our customers across sectors in doing the same.”
The Epwin Group was founded by Rawson in 1976. It floated on the Stock Exchange in 1987 but was brought back into private hands in 2000.
Many of the Latium brands, meanwhile, were acquired by Mr Kennedy from Heywood Williams in 2005. It also acquired the Lancashire-based Ultraframe business a year later.
Mr Kennedy, said: “There is a very strong commercial fit between Latium and Epwin businesses and the merger creates tremendous new opportunities for both employees, customers and suppliers.
“It has both the stability and financial resource to see out challenges and to secure new opportunities, something which we are confident will deliver advantages for not just its member businesses but customers and the building products industry more broadly.”
Funding for the merged group has been provided exclusively by Barclays Corporate, Bristol.
Latium’s former parent company, Building Plastics Holdings, had been hit by the decline in the housebuilding industry and sales had dropped from over £97m in 2007 to £60.2m in 2010 – the last year for which accounts were filed.
The accounts showed that its main operating subsidiary, Spectus, had breached its banking covenants, but that another firm owned by Mr Kennedy had provided loans to improve its working capital. Window Care Ltd – a company owned by Mr Kennedy – loaned Building Plastics Holdings £5.4m during the year.
