CRH, the building material group, continuing with its rapid acquisition programme, has purchased two Dutch builders' merchants for £12 million.
This is CRH's second announcement of acquisitions this week, having announced its move into the Paris market on Monday, with a £7 million acquisition of the 50 per cent stake in a French company. Spending on acquisitions amounted to £77 million so far this year.
The latest companies acquired are the Kelders Group and Holding W van der Schoot. The take covers are being effected through Van Neerbos, CRH's Dutch subsidiary, which is involved in retail DIY and builders' merchants.
The two companies had a combined trading profit of £2 million on sales of £24 million in 1995. Profit margins amounted to 8.3 per cent. The deal will add 0.2p to group earnings, based on the historic 1995 figures, said Mr Myles Lee, CRH's general manager, finance.
As CRH is paying a premium on the asset value, there will be goodwill of £4 million.
Both companies are profitable and have had a "very consistent" profit record, he said. Asked about this year, he noted the difficulties encountered by building material companies across Europe because of the cold winter/spring.
However, the group was very confident that they would integrate well with CRH's Dutch operations. Also there was "scope to develop" the specialist roofing side further. Van Neerbos now has 43 merchanting outlets in the Netherlands.
Kelders is the larger of the two companies and is a specialist roofing and insulation merchant with six branches in the Netherlands. It manufactures translucent roof structures a new product area for Van Neerbos from Nijmegen.
The existing management, under managing director Mr John Kelders, would continue to operate the merchanting business as a separate specialist division of the Van Neerbos group, CRH said. However, the translucent roof structures business would be integrated with Van Neerbos's Valulux Grillo division.
Van der Schoot is a wholesaler and distributor of lightside building materials. It has one modern branch located at Eindhoven.
