28 Oct 2005
Bekaert acquires Southwest Screens & Filters, a leading player in filter applications for the polymer industry
Bekaert has acquired Southwest Screens & Filters SA for an enterprise value of € 6 million. With production facilities in Sprimont (Belgium) and just outside Jakarta (Indonesia), Southwest realises annual sales of € 10 million. The company employs 125 people and is one of the world players in metal fibre based industrial process filters. These filters are used mainly in the polymer industry for filtering possible impurities out of the molten raw material during the production process, to ensure the good quality of the synthetic fibre or film.
In its fibre technologies, Bekaert is market leader for the production of ultra-thin metal fibres which are used in a number of applications such as filtration, electro-conductive textiles and conductive plastics.
With the acquisition, Bekaert broadens its product offering in the area of filtration. It now offers besides metal fibre media, also a full range of metal filter elements and systems for polymer filtration, for gas/solid filtration and for liquid/solid backwash filtration.
Georges Brys, Group Executive Vice President, explains: “The acquisition reinforces Bekaert’s growth in fibre technologies. We want to achieve sustainable profitable growth in selected applications of metal fibre based filtration processes. By gaining additional technological skills in new filtration applications, we will acquire a better insight into the needs of the end customer. This will enable us to gain access to new market segments with high added value.”
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Contact: bafinfo@bekaert.com
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Bekaert Advanced Filtration S.A.Rue de Cornemont 9-11
4141 Sprimont
Belgium
Belgium
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Eveline Andersag
Bekaert Fibre Processing Systems NV