David Parkin
Business Editor
THE Yorkshire manufacturing firm where Kevin Keegan began his working life has been bought by a Dutch group in a deal believed to be worth around £40m.
Tap and valve maker Pegler Holdings, which employs 500 people and has turnover of almost £50m, has been bought by Dutch group Aalberts Industries.
Doncaster-based Pegler, founded in 1899, was bought by its management from UK group Tomkins in January 2004 and is now part of an international industrial group with two main operations – industrial services and flow control.
Former Liverpool, Newcastle and England striker Keegan worked at Pegler as a welder and played in the works team before his football career took off.
The deal represents a quick turnaround for the business, only 18 months after the management bought it. All the management team, led by managing director Tony Clarkson, will stay on following the deal.
Aalberts owns Yorkshire Fittings, a Leeds-based firm which supplies a range of copper pipeline components to the plumbing, heating and mechanical services industries.
Pegler will work alongside Yorkshire Fittings using the same distribution networks and sharing purchasing and new product development
Pegler, which produces taps, valves, fittings and heating products such as thermostatic radiator valves, was advised by a team from KPMG Corporate Finance which also advised its management on the buyout from Tomkins last year.
Pegler, the UK market leader, operates from a plant in Doncaster which is one of the largest chrome plating operations in Europe.
Mr Clarkson said: "This development puts Pegler at the heart of Aalberts core business and represents a major opportunity for the company to continue to trade independently whilst achieving further advantage through group leverage and expansion into new markets through Aalberts' sister companies."
The KPMG team was led by Jonathan Boyers and Mark Fowler.
Danny Hall and Mark Holleran from Eversheds provided legal advice.
Aalberts has a workforce of 7,131 in Europe and made profits of £71m on turnover of £612m last year.
Pegler has developed a series of new products and those developed in the past five years account for half its turnover. It has expanded into new markets in both Western and Eastern Europe and becoming part of the Aalberts group is seen as an opportunity to increase its markets more rapidly.
Pegler was founded in 1899 by two Victorian entrepreneurs, Frank Pegler and Fred Birchall. Frank Pegler had inherited the Northern Rubber Company, however he was keen to expand the business and had already started a merchant company in Glasgow by the time he met Fred Birchall who had gained experience as a brass founder starting work aged 13 at the Hexthorpe Brass and Iron works in Doncaster.
He rose through the ranks to become manager and then went to work for brass founders Mckay in Glasgow. Frank agreed to put up the money for Fred to start a new operation to supply his merchandising company.
Pegler was the first company to mass produce the tap, which was invented in 1845, at its Belmont works at Balby near Doncaster, which were built in 1904 and where the company is still based.
During the First World War Pegler switched production to Sopwith fighter planes. It floated on the stock market in 1932 and during the Second World War produced brass shells, fuses, valves and taps for the military.
david.parkin@ypn.co.uk