Domino Printing Sciences has agreed terms for the acquisition, of 95 per cent of the equity of Alternative Printing Services (APS), in Herrenberg, Germany, manufacturer of thermal inkjet printers. The acquisition is Domino’s fourth in the last year.
The initial price payable is €15.2M, of which €13.9M will be paid at closing of the transaction on August 31, 2008. The balance will be paid in February 2010. Deferred consideration is also payable subject to and based upon the performance of the business over a three-year period from the date of the acquisition.
The APS vendors include key managers Werner Schäffer, Xavier Ferbo, Andrew Sharp and Michael Kögler, who have all been retained on long term employment contracts.
The value of gross assets of APS at 31 December 2007 was €2.5M. Operating profits for the 12 months to December 31, 2007 were €0.4M.
Nigel Bond, Domino’s group MD comments: “APS has developed certain know-how and has patented ink technology that we believe will broaden the use and application of thermal inkjet products in our core market areas. APS products are enabling improved print quality at high speed and on an increasingly wide variety of substrates, in particular for 2D barcodes and other machine readable formats necessary to meet a range of applications including track and trace. The addition of these products to the Domino range will enhance and extend our capabilities.”
