Suprajit Engineering to acquire Light Duty Cable business unit of Kongsberg Automotive ASA

With this, Suprajit Engineering will emerge as a global leader in control cables in all these segments with a strong global presence.

Suprajit Engineering has announced that it has signed a definitive share and asset purchase agreement to acquire Light Duty Cable (LDC) business unit on October 28, 2021, with Kongsberg Automotive ASA, listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange, Norway.

The LDC business unit of Kongsberg Automotive Group consists of the cable business, supplying to automotive, non-automotive and 2-wheeler segments along with Electro-Mechanical Actuators (EMA). Through this transaction, Suprajit will also add key actuation technologies that can be brought to other customers of the company. EMA will emerge as a new product segment in the future, for the group.

This transaction also involves the transfer of global sales and engineering expertise related to this business to Suprajit Engineering. The transaction is expected to close by end of January 2022. LDC consists of three manufacturing plants located in Matamoros - Mexico, Siofok - Hungary, and Shanghai - China, and a warehouse in Brownsville - USA. LDC’s global business development and engineering teams are at plants and other key geographies including the US, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden and the UK, and will come under the fold of Suprajit Engineering. The total employee strength of LDC is approximately 1300 employees at the end of Q2.

Kongsberg Automotive is a global automotive supplier, headquartered in Zurich. Through this divestment, Kongsberg Automotive will realign its product portfolio and this transaction will provide a strong focus to the cables business as part of Suprajit Engineering.

To quote an excerpt from the company’s filing with the exchange, “The current year sale is expected to be in the range of USD 90 million. Enterprise value of the transaction is pegged at USD 42 million. LDC has marquee global customers in automotive, non-automotive and two-wheeler businesses and is a segment leader in its own right. With this, Suprajit will emerge as a global leader in control cables in all these segments with a strong global presence. LDC will be a very complementary fit in its manufacturing footprint, customer base, product and technology.”

Suprajit Engineering is India’s largest automotive cable and halogen bulb maker with an annual global capacity of 300 million cables and 110 million halogen bulbs. The company’s customer list includes most Indian automotive majors and also exports to many marquee global customers.

Share price of Surajit Engineering soared by roughly 3%, to touch an intra-day high of Rs 366 per share on Friday, 29 October 2021.