Senior sells ventilation duct unit

Senior, the FTSE 250 international manufacturing group, has disposed of its interest in Senior Hargreaves Limited, its heating and ventilation ducting supplier division.

Hargreaves, which was part of Senior's Flexonics Division, has been sold to M+W Group; there was no sale price given in the company statement.

The subsidiary served its products to the nuclear and construction industry, but Senior said that this was its only business operating in these markets.

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"Although it had been a successful part of the Group for nearly 60 years, it no longer fitted into the on-going strategic direction of Senior," the company said.

Hargreaves generated sales of £17.0m and operating profit of £0.7m in the first nine months of 2012. Senior said that operating margins for its Flexonics Division for the first half were dragged down by Hargreaves: they would have been 14.5% if Hargreaves' results had been excluded; instead they were 13.6%.

"I am very pleased to announce the disposal of Hargreaves to M+W and to wish the management and employees of Hargreaves all the very best for the future with their new, and more logical, owners," said Senior's Chief Executive Mark Rollins.

"Following the disposal, Senior now has eleven synergistic operations in its Flexonics Division, each operating in niche strategic markets with healthy longer-term growth prospects."

M+W, which generated €2.5bn in revenue last year, is a global engineering, construction and project management company, specialising in the fields of Advanced Technology Facilities, Life Science & Chemicals, Energy & Environment Technologies and High Tech Infrastructure.