Anglian Water buys Swedish engineer

ANGLIAN WATER, until now one of the most cautious of the 10 privatised water and sewage companies, is moving into Europe via the pounds 36m acquisition of the Swedish process engineer Nordic, writes Tom Stevenson.

Alan Smith, Anglian's managing director, described the deal as a 'rare opportunity'. Nordic, which had sales last year of pounds 83m, upgrades treatment works, mainly in the UK and Scandinavia, and sells sewage filters.

Nordic will be integrated into a new process engineering division along with last year's acquisition, Rosewater Engineering. The new business will have sales of about pounds 110m compared with Anglian's core turnover of pounds 600m. The company has yet to make profits from its unregulated activities.

Last year, Nordic made pre-tax profits of about pounds 4m and had orders in hand of pounds 67m. Analysts expect no impact on earnings this year.

North West Water also announced a non-core acquisition. It is buying Minnesota-based Consolidated Electric, which makes automatic control devices, for an undisclosed sum. Consolidated had sales last year of dollars 5.2m and net assets of dollars 2.5m.