Acquisitions

Historic British paper mill in Italian hands

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F.I.L.A., Fabbrica Italiana Lapis e Affini S.p.A., has announced the acquisition of 100% of St Cuthberts Holdings Limited and of the operating company held by it. St Cuthberts, founded in 1907, is a historic English paper mill located in the south-west of England which manufactures high quality drawing paper for artistic purposes. Over time, the company has specialised in the manufacture of paper for watercolours, etching and fine arts, creating its products using a particular manufacturing technique, using a cylinder mould, which has the distinction of giving its products very high quality craftsmanship. During 2015, St Cuthberts generated revenue of more than 3.2 million pounds sterling and an Ebitda margin of about 17%. «St Cuthberts represents for Fila, not only a great industrial opportunity, but also amounts to an acquisition of strategic importance», comments Massimo Candela, Chief Executive Officer. «In the short term we shall be able to proceed to integrate productions, creating important synergies of revenue and costs, allowing FILA to further strengthen its own leadership in the fine art sector». The acquisition of the historic English paper mill is part of a consolidation path in the sector of the production of drawing paper for specialist artists, in which FILA already operates with the subsidiary Daler-Rowney, which it acquired in February 2016, and in the near future also through Canson, a company for which the Group is currently in exclusive negotiation with the Hamelin Group. The transaction value is 5.4 million pounds sterling.