Langley Holdings is a privately owned engineering group with one shareholder, its chairman and chief executive Tony Langley. It employs 2,300 staff and has worldwide revenues of approximately $660m with pre-tax profit of $100m. Langley will also acquire more than 40 of manroland’s international sales operations. The sale is subject to agreement by the German cartel office.
At a press conference held in Augsburg, administrator Werner Schneider confirmed that the manroland name would continue at the two separate sides of the business. The Augsburg web offset business acquired by Possehl will become manroland web systems, while the sheetfed operation acquired by Langley will become manroland sheetfed. A new UK company, Manroland Sheetfed Holdings, has been registered at Companies House in London.
At the press conference the sale of the web office division was confirmed where 1,510 staff will be retained with 741 redundancies. It is understood that the size of the Offenbach sheet fed operation will be reduced to 824 staff with 947 posts being eliminated.
Werner Schneider stated,“Tony Langley is well known as a long term investor who acts strategically. We are convinced that a lasting perspective has been found for manroland’s sheetfed printing business.” Tony Langley commented on the acquisition saying, “We foresee very good economic prospects for manroland sheetfed following the recent re-structuring. This is a world-class business with an excellent reputation and it’s production and research and development facilities are superb; everything one expects of the very best of German engineering.”
The interesting situation of the agreement with Langley Holdings is that Langley has no current business operations within the graphic communications industries. Langley started his business in 1975 when he resurrected the failed business of his grandfather. He grew this business supplying the UK coal industry, and in the early 1990s seeing the coal industry disappearing Langley acquired two engineering companies. He merged these and started to supply products to the power generation, process and oil and gas sector industries. Further developments and acquisitions were made during the 1990s, and in 2000 he acquired the materials handling business of Rolls Royce and crawler crane manufacturer RB. This doubled the turnover of the company to around $60m. The various engineering companies were reorganised into the Clarke Chapman Group.
In the next few years Langley expanded his operations with purchases of a German material handling and processing supplier in 2001; Piller Power Systems, the German based producer of uninterruptible power supplies and back up systems for high-end data centers in 2004; and in 2006 French based ARO Welding Technologies a world leader in resistance welding technology. Langley Holdings also owns a number of other companies in the UK and USA. The only one with any remote connection to the graphic arts markets is Bradman Lake Group, acquired in 2007 that produces integrated cartoning, wrapping and end-of-line packaging systems for the food industry and counts amongst its clients many of the world’s leading food companies.
The question is why has Tony Langley decided to acquire manroland sheetfed operations and sales channels. He already owns a number of highly successful German based companies and may well see the chance to utilise some of the excellent manufacturing facilities of the Offenbach operation to assist his other companies. It has also been stated by Werner Schneider that the company will be profitable going forward having been right sized for the needs of the market.
IIt will be very interesting to see how someone coming into the business from outside of the industry will decide how to operate the company. We may see this at the forthcoming drupa. It is however interesting to look back to an earlier acquisition made by Tony Langley when he purchased crane manufacturer RB. At the time he stated he would not exhibit at trade fairs. “We don’t exhibit as a policy,” he said. “I think it is a complete waste of time and money.”
Tony Langley is like a few other very successful businessmen in that he is a very keen and successful racing yachtman. Last October his Audi TP52 yacht Gladiator came third in its class in the world championship. Obviously he likes to win so his ownership of manroland sheetfed should be very interesting to watch.
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