Lake Forest, Ill. – Brunswick Corporation (NYSE: BC) today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Lankhorst Taselaar, a leading marine parts and accessories distribution company based in the Netherlands and Germany. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Upon completion of this transaction, Lankhorst Taselaar will be integrated into Mercury Marine to augment the engine maker’s strong and growing P&A business in Europe.
With 2016 revenue of approximately $25 million, Lankhorst Taselaar sells an extensive array of parts and components, as well as offers next-day delivery to nearly all its 3,000 customers, many of which are new to Mercury Marine’s network in the region.
The transaction is subject to usual and customary closing conditions including relevant merger filings, and is expected to close in the third quarter.
“Lankhorst Taselaar will help Mercury to advance its presence and service throughout Northern Europe, particularly in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Germany,” explained John Pfeifer, president – Mercury Marine. “It allows us to more quickly accomplish our goals of increasing share in this important and growing market, and the unified distribution network should greatly accelerate the future growth of the combined operations, with a broader product line and an expanded distribution network.”
Lankhorst Taselaar’s workforce consists of approximately 50 people and the company will continue the planned move into a new state-of-the-art facility in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, by the end of 2017.
The Lankhorst Taselaar acquisition is expected to have minimal impact upon Brunswick’s 2017 results, Brunswick Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Schwabero explained. Further, the impact of this type of transaction has already been considered in Brunswick’s 2018 plan, which was originally presented to the financial community in November 2015.
“We continue to seek opportunities to strategically grow our marine and fitness operations throughout the world,” Schwabero explained. “Lankhorst Taselaar will bolster and solidify the distribution arm of our marine P&A business in Europe. As we have done in recent years with BLA in Australia and Payne’s Marine in Canada, Lankhorst Taselaar expands our reach and customer responsiveness in the global marine marketplace and offers us a larger footprint upon which to build in Europe.
“Pursuing the Lankhorst Taselaar transaction is further evidence that Brunswick is executing its strategy to add operations, particularly those in fitness and marine P&A,” Schwabero said. “Including this and other completed acquisitions, we continue to target $350 million of additional revenue from P&A acquisitions by 2018, which was originally shared with the financial community in 2015.”