The Swedish Sandvik Group acquires AUBEMA

The medium-sized company AUBEMA Crushing Technology GmbH, a size-reduction equipment manufacturer, located in the region Oberberg/North-Rhine Westfalia, enters a new era.

Since its foundation as Aulmann & Beckschulte Maschinenfabrik in 1947, the company has continuously developed and is today acknowledged as one of the leading specialists in the field of crushing and grinding technology. AUBEMA's crushing equipment is suitable for processing bulk materials such as coal, coke, different kinds of iron ore and other basic materials.

Since the mid-90s, Norbert Britz as the general manager has played a major role in enhancing entrepreneurial activities in the company. He has strongly focused on marketing and sales, customer orientation as well as on the company’s core competencies. As early as 2005, the company was one of the first foreign investors to establish a fully-owned subsidiary in China. Since 2000 the company has tripled its total turnover.
Owing to the partnership with the financial investor Hannover Finanz in 2006, the company was able to finance its rapid growth on the global markets for energy generation and nutrition.
This was the constellation under which controlled growth for the upcoming years was planned. The takeover bid that has now been submitted by the Swedish industrial group Sandvik AB must be seen as a compliment for the expertise and professional know-how that AUBEMA has accumulated over years.

Sandvik is a strategic investor. The group has about 47,000 employees worldwide and a turnover of more than 7 billion euro. Sandvik, who maintains a world-leading position within selected areas including metal working, mining as well as production and processing of special metals will be integrating AUBEMA’s activities into its Mining and Construction division, where the newly-acquired professional know-how is a perfect complement to the existing core area crushing technology.

Subject to the approval of the antitrust authorities, the Sandvik Group intends to acquire 100% of the shares in Aubema Holding and its subsidiaries AUBEMA Crushing Technology and Beijing AUBEMA Technology. The management under Norbert Britz and the technical director Bruno Götz will remain active in the company. Both of them and the Hannover Finanz Group will divest all their shares. Together with the private equity investor HANNOVER Finanz Group AUBEMA realized several years of successful growth.

The involvement of the Hannover Finanz group was originally regarded as a long-term partnership arrangement. However, in view of the anticipated synergies, this partner did not want to impede the company’s positive progress and declared his readiness to sell its shareholding.

It is planned to integrate the headquarters in Bergneustadt in form of a technical competence center for the Sandvik Group. This is expected to create additional jobs for engineers in the design engineering, planning and sales departments. Sandvik will also be entering into the lease agreement, which still has about nine years to run. These are all positive signs of long-term commitment.

Sandvik’s acquisition constitutes a win-win situation for all parties involved. For the employees at the headquarters in Bergneustadt, securing the future by strengthening and expanding the competence center is the major issue. Sandvik is broadening its portfolio in an efficient manner by completing its process chain. The Hannover Finanz Group will bring a commercially advantageous and useful involvement to a successful conclusion. The individual partners who are selling their shares have resolved the problem of management succession by giving it into competent hands while actively helping to shape the immediate future.