Abrasive firm to make $6.5M float

Press, 24 March 1984, Page 22

Abrasive firm to make $6.5M float

PA Auckland Carborundum New Zealand, Ltd, a new company formed specifically to buy the abrasive interests of Auckland-based Carborundum Abrasives, Ltd, will make a $6.5 million share float next month.

The public will be offered 45 per cent of the share holding (worth $2,925,000). The remaining 55 per cent ($3,575,000) will be subscribed by executives of the present company. A prospectus with full details of the issue is expected to be registered on April 4. Stock exchange listing will be sought. Neither the organising broker, Hendry Hay Smythe and Horton, of Auckland, nor the manager and underwriter, NZI Securities Ltd, would disclose the nominal value or issue price

of the shares yesterday. However, market sources suggested that the shares would be of 50c denomination, and would be offered at a premium of 80c, making 3 total of 130 c each. In that event, the new company would have the ability to make tax-free dividend distributions once appropriate approvals were obtained.

Carborundum NZ, Ltd, is a major producer of domestic and industrial abrasives with annual sales of about SBM.

The public float follows the purchase by local management last year of an undertaking which had been controlled from the United States since 1967 when Carborundum, a wholly owned subsidiary of the copper giant, Kennecott, bought the New Zealand-owned Flexi-

ble Abrasives, Ltd. The company, which now operates from a North Shore industrial site, em-

ploys more than 100 people. The managing director of Carborundum NZ, Ltd, Mr J. I. Greenstreet, said the

company was a major manufacturer and supplier of sandpapers, a select "i range of bonded abrasives, 'j. and a small but significant 4 range of ancillary abrasive '* products. The chairman of the new y company will be Mr L. R. 4 Willis. Other directors are Mr J. B. Ede, the managing J director of Winstone, Ltd; Mr A. J. Godfrey, a resident New Zealand director of * Carborundum under its previous ownership; Mr * Greenstreet; and two other * executive directors, Mr P. E. Woodcock and Mr P. S. Bowler. 2