 |
 |
||||||
[May 2002]
Acquisition to Make Brickworks Ltd Australia's Largest Floor Tile Producer
Austral Tiles Pty Ltd - a wholly owned subsidiary of clay products and investment company Brickworks Ltd - has announced that it is acquiring Eureka Tiles Pty Ltd. Eureka Tiles is majority owned by the Australian private equity company, Catalyst, following a management buyout in 1997.The acquisition makes Brickworks Australia's largest producer of floor tiles with a combined capacity of approaching 2 million square metres per annum. Even so, this will only be a small percentage of the estimated 25 million square metres per annum Australian floor tile market.
Eureka Tiles has been producing floor tiles for over 30 years and is currently Australia's premier and largest floor tile producer, with two factories located at Ballarat, Victoria. The new combined entity will trade under the name of Eureka Tiles.
Austral paid A$12.75 million for the Eureka Tiles operation which has an annual capacity of 1 million square metres of unglazed and glazed floor tiles and in excess of 200,000 units of bathroom fittings. The acquisition will also include A$9.6 million in land, plant and equipment and A$4.7 million in inventories.
According to Lindsay Partridge, Managing Director of Brickworks Ltd, Eureka's leading glazed tile production was a perfect fit with Austral's recently completed new unglazed tile plant at Punchbowl, New South Wales.
"The combined operation will have sales in excess of £25 million, giving it critical mass and allowing Brickworks to take advantage of increased economies of scale," said Mr Partridge. "With over 80 per cent of the Australian tile market serviced by imports, there is an opportunity for an Australian producer to gain market share."
Eureka distributed its products nationally and also exports to New Zealand. Brickworks has manufacturing operations in New South Wales and Queensland and exports are to New Zealand and Asia, including Japan.
ENDS