Titan boosts Turkish operations with £7.5m buy-out of JV

STEEL wheels manufacturer Titan Europe has acquired the remaining 50% of its Turkish joint venture Titan Jantsa in a deal worth £7.5m.

The announcement comes the day after the Kidderminster firm said in its annual results it was looking to develop its interests in emerging markets such as Turkey and the Far East.

Shares picked up in early trading immediately following the announcement.

Titan Jantsa, established as a joint venture in 2005, serves the Turkish market and Western European OEM customers, mainly with agricultural wheels of up to 38-inch diameter. The Titan Jantsa operation currently manufactures 150,000 wheels per year and supplies CNH, Same, Landini and CLAAS in Europe and Turk Tractor in Turkey.

For the year ended December 31, 2010, Titan Jantsa recorded profit before tax of £0.88m (€1m) on turnover of £9m (€10.2m).  At the same date, Titan Jantsa had net assets of £8.8m (€10m).

Titan Jantsa’s unaudited results for the period January to March 2011 showed revenues of £2.73m (€3.1m) with an EBITDA of £0.7m (€0.8m – 25.8%). As of this date, the company also had cash of £2.82m (€3.2m).

Titan said the Turkish factory had proved a highly successful addition to the group’s manufacturing capability providing low-cost, high-quality product in a region with easy access to the Italian ports and mainstream European operations.

Mike Akers, group chief executive, said: “As we highlighted in our Preliminary Results, it is our intention to further develop our manufacturing presence in Turkey for wheels and in Brazil and China for undercarriages.

“We view Turkey as an excellent base to further expand our lower-cost production facilities. The Titan Jantsa operation has skills, resources and significant capacity available and we believe that it can further benefit from our 100% ownership.”

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