FCL to purchase unlisted company

Press, 12 June 1986, Page 24

FCL to purchase unlisted company

PA Wellington Fletcher Challenge, Ltd, will buy unlisted Pearson Knowles and Ryland Bros NZ, Ltd, from Steel and Tube Holdings, Ltd. The purchase is to be made through FCL subsidiary Fletcher Industries, Ltd, for an undisclosed cash sum, FCL said yesterday. PKR comprises Eagle Wire Products, Ltd (100 per centowned), and Blair Reed and Company, Ltd, (60 per centowned with a subsidiary of Johns Perry, Australia). Employing about 150 people, the PKR group operates from various North Island locations, manufacturing and distributing nails, staples, mesh, wire products and fastening systems nationally.

The sale completes the

withdrawal of Steel and Tube from downstream wire-based manufacturing. Steel and Tube sold its other investment (Consolidated Metal Industries, Ltd), in that area last year. The statement said there would be no redundancies or management changes in the PKR group as a result of the ownership change. Approval from the Examiner of Commercial Practices will take effect from July. The chief executive of FCL’s steel sector, Mr David Delay, said the purchase took FCL Industries, Ltd, into new manufacturing areas that integrated with the sector’s present interests in Pacific Steel, Ltd, and New Zealand Wire Industries, Ltd.

“With the elimination of import licensing, the New Zealand steel industry has to change rapidly to compete against imports from lowercost countries,” he said. FCL saw the need to take a position in the downstream wire industry to help protect its heavy investment upstream, such as in the planned new bar mill for Pacific Steel. It would keep orders flowing through the New Zealand steel chain and help preserve employment, he said. The managing director of Steel and Tube, Mr Doug Thurston, said the deregulated environment in which manufacturers now found themselves meant organisations such as PKR would be better placed to meet competition and to remain profitable if they were associated with an industry grouping such as FCL could provide.