Andrew Industries Ltd (Andrew) was founded in 1894 and began business in the north Lancashire town of Bury selling woven textiles to laundries. Andrew has grown significantly since. Its filtration division is now a leading global manufacturer and supplier of non-woven felt filter media and filter bags used in industrial air filtration applications. The company today is headquartered in Accrington in the North-West of England with revenues in this division of c.£90 million.
We won the mandate to advise Andrew in 2008 on its strategic options. This initially led to the sale of its Canadian business, Filterfab, to National Filter Media in the US in 2009. Since then, we have continued to advise Andrew on its various options and potential partners for the filtration division.
We worked closely with Andrew to identify Lydall Inc., listed on the NYSE, as the right partner. Andrew's market leading division has a global footprint with operations in the US, UK and China and would offer Lydall the ability to expand its global footprint, add complementary and new technologies, as well as meaningful scale to the combined business.
We led the negotiations with Lydall to ensure that appropriate value was obtained in each of the division's complex business operations across the globe.
In addition, our team worked hard to manage the diligence process liaising closely with the legal advisors. There were further detailed negotiations throughout the process which included the supplier-customer relationship between Lydall and the retained Andrew businesses as well as transfer of intellectual property.
The transaction completed in February 2014 with both parties looking forward to a bright future. Andrew Industries continues to operate its Laundry and Engineering divisions.
Grant Thornton had done a very good job for us previously when we sold a subsidiary in Canada which is why we invited them to guide us through the sale of several of our subsidiaries around the world within our Filtration Division. Grant Thornton were able to handle the complexities of the transaction to our total satisfaction with a pragmatic approach to issues. They did a very good job for us again second time round.
Ted Andrew Executive Chairman and Shareholder, Andrew Industries Limited
