SKF AB (Sweden) has signed an agreement to acquires Willy Vogel AG (Germany, owned since 1988 by private equity firm Hannover Finanz Group).

With five manufacturing plants (USA, Japan, France, two in Germany) and sales offices in ten countries, Vogel Group employs 940 people and has annual sales over USD $133 million.

The acquisition marks another step in SKF's move to diversify its bearing-related manufacturing operations into related but higher-margin value-added products and services.

SKF's existing lubrication systems business unit has annual sales under $27 million; the Vogel Group acquisition catapults SKF into a leading position in the worldwide market for lubrication systems.

Vogel has a presence in most industrial markets: machine tools, printing, automotive manufacturing, steel manufacturing, windmills, and a wide variety of other segments. SKF operates in most of these same markets, making the fit with Vogel and the marketplace leverage strongly complimentary with SKF's businesses.

Emphasizing the complimentary nature of the acquisition, SKF CEO Tom Johnstone said, "We have today within the Group very advanced knowledge in lubricants and lubrication systems that are vital design elements of bearings, bearing solutions and their applications." He went on to say, "In our acquisition analysis we saw an opportunity to significantly strengthen that knowledge and to acquire a leading market position within the lubrication systems area. Through this acquisition, the SKF Group has established a new product platform to be added to the bearings, seals, linear motion products and reliability systems."

SKF's Industrial Division will be home to a new Lubrication Systems division, carved out to accommodated the combined SKF and Vogel operations.

Terms of the acquisition were not yet disclosed; EU antitrust approval and final agreements between the companies are not yet complete.



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