Weir Group – the parent company of slurry equipment provider Weir Minerals – has entered into an agreement to acquire Trio Engineering Products.
Trio is a Chinese-American manufacturer that supplies equipment to Australia’s quarrying industry through local distributors Index Industrial Brokers and OPS Screening and Crushing Equipment.
Under the agreement, Weir will acquire both Trio’s Chinese and US-based businesses for approximately $USD220 million ($AUD250.7 million) from majority owner Navis Capital and the company’s management team, with Trio’s three founders to remain with the company after the acquisition.
In a press release, Weir stated that the acquisition would allow the company to cross-sell its products to the North American and Chinese sand and aggregates markets through sales channels already established by Trio. The sand and aggregates market was said to have accounted for 56 per cent of Trio’s revenue in 2013.
Weir Group chief executive Keith Cochrane commented, “We’ll use our group’s unrivalled global capability to promote Trio’s range of complementary products, extending our addressable market and offering our mining customers a wider range of highly engineered equipment and services. Trio’s established manufacturing capability and its scale and presence in aggregates markets also provides a further platform for growth.”
Trio chief executive Mike Burke said the agreement had been “strategically compelling”. “[The agreement allows Trio] to leverage Weir’s market-leading service centre network to accelerate growth and better serve our customers’ aftermarket needs on a truly global basis,” he explained.
Cochrane added that the acquisition would allow Weir Minerals to build upon its successful comminution strategy. Earlier this year, as part of this strategy, Weir made two bids to acquire quarrying equipment major Metso. However, after Metso rejected its second proposal based on claims that it undervalued the company, Weir stated it would not be pursuing the opportunity further.
Quarry approached Weir and Trio for further comment on the impact the acquisition would have on Australian customers, however, further information was not available at the time of publication.
Trio, which is based in Shanghai, China, designs and manufactures a range of crushers, screens, feeders, washers and material handling solutions for the aggregates and minerals markets. Weir Group is headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, and provides engineering solutions and services to customers in the minerals, oil and gas, and power sectors.