Wood Sells Industrial Services Business to Kaefer

Oilfield services company John Wood Group, recently rebranded to Wood, has sold its industrial services business to Kaefer.

London-listed Wood said the sale of the part of the business which provides integrity and fabric maintenance for assets in the marine and offshore oil and gas sectors in the North Sea region was sold for $104 million. 

On top of that, Wood could also receive $14 million more pending achievement of agreed financial goals.

"The divestment is another important step in Wood's portfolio rationalization strategy and follows the planned sale of the company's nuclear business, which was announced in August 2019 and is expected to complete in Q1 2020. Cash proceeds from the disposals will be used to reduce debt," Wood said.

David Kemp, Wood's chief financial officer said: "The sale of our industrial services business is the latest divestment aimed at maintaining our strong balance sheet and achieving our target leverage.

"As our focus has moved towards building a premium, differentiated and higher-margin business, the industrial services offering is no longer core to our strategy. However, it is an excellent fit with Kaefer who sees a clear opportunity to grow the business further and extend its market share across new sectors and geographies."

The division bought by Kaefer provides the ap­plic­a­tion of pro­tect­ive coat­ings, ac­cess solu­tions, thermal in­su­la­tion, pass­ive fire pro­tec­tion, and spe­cial­ist ser­vices, which Kaefers sees as a "perfect fit" for its core business. 

Steen E. Hansen, Co-CEO at Kaefer: “Our cli­ents will con­tinue to re­ceive the same high-qual­ity ser­vice they have come to ex­pect plus the ex­tra value offered by both com­pan­ies work­ing to­gether.

 “Wood’s in­dus­trial ser­vices busi­ness and Kaefer work in dif­fer­ent, yet re­lated in­dus­tries, which is why they com­ple­ment one an­other so well. These com­bined cap­ab­il­it­ies will sup­port our cli­ents’ suc­cess and in­crease our com­pet­it­ive strength. We are cer­tain that this is an ex­cel­lent step to­wards reach­ing the goals es­tab­lished in our stra­tegic pro­gramme,” Hansen said. 

According to Kaefer, Wood’s in­dus­trial ser­vices busi­ness em­ploys ap­prox­im­ately 2,000 people at 16 loc­a­tions all over the UK and Ire­land. Kaefer itself, provides ac­cess solu­tions, in­su­la­tion, in­spec­tion & test­ing, pro­tect­ive coat­ings, and as­bes­tos man­age­ment in the UK. The com­pany cur­rently has 12 of­fice loc­a­tions across the UK, em­ploy­ing ap­prox­im­ately 1,200 people.