Carpet company eyes up further acquisition opportunities

Carpet company Victoria is eyeing up further acquisition targets as it announced strong trading in the five months to August with group like-for-like sales up by more than 3%.

Kidderminster-based Victoria, which has a major manufacturing site near Bradford, bought Spanish tile manufacturer Cerámica Saloni last month in an £86m deal, said that in addition to organic growth, the group continues to work on further acquisitions, in particular in Europe – with “no shortage of high quality opportunities”.

Meanwhile, Victoria said its previously announced strategy to use competitive product positioning to drive volume and market share growth in the UK – where the group has made no acquisitions since October 2016 – is delivering as planned, with like-for-like revenue growth for the period also in excess of 3%.

Victoria has developed a number of new product ranges across the group to be launched during the second half of the financial year.

The company said: “The group is pleased to confirm that the recent acquisition of Ceramica Saloni has performed as anticipated and is exactly the business we expected. Operational management are now fully engaged in integrating the business with Keraben Grupo, and projects to realise synergies have been initiated.

“In line with the group’s strategy to build a business that is increasingly resilient to different market conditions, it continues to diversify both geographically and by product category. Nearly 70% of the group’s earnings are now generated from outside of the UK and are spread across several categories of flooring including carpets, ceramics, underlay, and LVT.”