Yorkshire group bought by Indian rival
HISTORIC Yorkshire manufacturer James Robinson, which makes photographic chemicals, hair dyes and dyes used in lenses for sunglasses, has been bought by Indian group Vivimed Labs.
The deal for the Huddersfield-based manufacturer, which was founded in 1840 and still operates from the same site, sees it sold for £9m by parent group Yule Catto.
New owner Vivimed Labs is based in Hyderabad and employs 450 people making products including sunscreens, dandruff treatments and hair conditioners, skin whitening cream and anti-fungal gel.
The James Robinson management team, led by Dr Richard Smith, will continue to run the business which has a plant at Dieburg in Germany.
James Robinson also has a joint venture operation in Gujurat, India, which Yule Catto will sell to its joint venture partner for around £770,000. Yule Catto said it would use the proceeds of the sales to reduce its borrowings.
James Robinson, which has its plant on Leeds Road in Huddersfield, made an operating profit of £820,000 on sales of £17.8m in the 12 months to December 31 2006 and had gross assets of £3m.
James Robinson is a world leader in the development of photochromic dyes which reversibly change colour upon exposure to ultraviolet light such as sunlight. It also produces hair dyes, photographic chemicals and a range of chemical products used in printing inks, plastics and for dyeing tennis balls.
Essex-based Yule Catto, which is quoted on the London Stock Exchange, owns the Synthomer polymer chemicals plants in Batley, Ossett and Grimsby and the Holliday Pigments business in Hull which closed its plant last year and moved production to northern France.
Adrian Whitfield, chief executive of Yule Catto, said: “This sale is in line with Yule Catto's corporate strategy of delivering improved shareholder value from its Impact Chemicals activities.”
James Robinson was founded in 1840 in Huddersfield and still occupies the same site next to the Huddersfield Broad Canal, making it one of the longest-surviving chemicals manufacturing locations still in operation in Europe.
The original business comprised the extraction of dyestuffs from natural products such as logwood imported from the West Indies through Liverpool for silk dyeing. In the early part of the 20th century, fuelled by growth in the British textile industry, the company became one of the world's leading manufacturers of sulphur dyes used for dyeing of cotton and leather.
Privately owned and run by the Abbey family, it was bought in the 1970's by Hickson International Group which accelerated its diversification into photographic and cosmetic products.
In 1987 the company was acquired by Holliday Chemicals and Yule Catto bought it in 1998 and it has increased its sales by 50% over the last decade.
