RFI Shielding Limited acquired for £9 Million

Cirqual plc, a rapidly growing, profitable and cash-generating group involved in aluminium and thermoplastic extrusion and specialist engineering, is now pleased to announce that on Friday 18 April it exchanged contracts on the proposed acquisition of Braintree based, RFI Shielding Limited, for £9 million (debt free), from Siebe plc.

RFI Shielding became a part of the Siebe Group by virtue of Siebe's acquisition of Unitech plc for £586.5 million in May 1996.

Managing Director of RFI Shielding Limited, Barry Comley, says, "Our management team is delighted by the acquisition and feel that it vindicates the hard work and effort that has been applied over the past few years by all the employees, which has established RFI as Europe's leading EMC shielding company. The future is exciting to say the least and much of future expansion will come from Xyshield our Form-in-Place gasket material. Needless to say we will not be neglecting our core shielding business which will also contribute significantly to the planned expansion."

Comley also says that, "the new Board have assured us full support in our aggressive expansion plans and objective to remain the market leader."

Although sales to the telecommunications sector currently represent 75% of RFI's turnover, sales to new application areas outside telecoms are under development. This will ensure that other market sectors expand quickly and maintain their share of overall turnover. Furthermore, turnover to the telecommunications sector is expected by the Directors to grow rapidly in the near future. Such market growth will be driven by the requirement to comply with Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) legislation as set out in the January 1996 EC directive. The Directors consider that it is likely that the increasing use of mobile telephones will result in the need for phones which operate at substantially higher frequencies requiring greater shielding. Export sales currently account for 20% of total sales and the Directors expect this figure to increase in future years as both Core Gasket sales increase and the Asia-Pacific and US markets