Metso has completed the divestment of certain parts of its industrial rubber conveyor belt manufacturing and related sales and services operations. The operations comprise 27 locations with around 330 employees previously belonging to Metso's Mining and Construction segment. The industrial rubber conveyor belt manufacturing and sales and services locations in Finland were divested to ContiTech Conveyor Belt Group. The industrial rubber conveyor belt sales and services locations in Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and in Southern Sweden were divested to Lutze Group. The divested sales and services operations serve other customer industries than Metso's focus areas in mining and construction. The price of the transaction will not be disclosed.
"Metso is a leading technology and services provider to the mining and construction industries and we want to focus on strengthening this position also in the future. At the same time we need to continuously improve the competitiveness of our business and to further develop customer service. The divestment is part of our strategy to develop and simplify our current production capacity in Europe", says Pasi Jokela, SVP, Process Wears Solutions.
The ContiTech Conveyor Belt Group, a business unit under the ContiTech Division of the automotive supplier Continental AG, is one of the world's leading suppliers of technical rubber products and is a specialist for plastics technology. The division develops and produces functional parts, components and systems for the automotive industry and other important industries. ContiTech has a workforce of approximately 28,000 employees. In 2012, it achieved sales of about €3.7 billion.
The LUTZE-Group is a family owned business with two industrial sectors. The conveyor business of Lutze Fördertechnik is focused on supplying and servicing its customers mainly with quality conveyor belts and spray coat wear protection. Lutze Kunststofftechnik engineers and manufactures polyurethane parts - also for wear protection - in its own plant in Germany. In 2012, net sales amounted to approximately € 25 million with around 160 employees.
