TRANPORT seating maker Transcal has taken over an English engineering and fabrication firm to boost its rail division.
Livingston based Transcal paid an undisclosed sum to snap up Winstanley Holdings in Pershore, Worcester.
However the Scottish business believes the move will more than double revenue at its rail division from £5.5 million to £11.5m.
Transcal, which employs 97 people, said the deal also expands its capabilities in the defence industry.
As a result it expects turnover across the group to grow to more than £27m next year, from the current £14.5m.
The 84 staff employed by Winstanley are all being retained.
Outgoing major shareholder Rod Smith, who is retiring, said: "The Transcal acquisition makes great strategic sense for the two businesses. I am delighted for Winstanley to join the Transcal group of companies.
"Our joint strengths make a most compelling offer to rail and defence sector customers. This investment is good news for the future of Winstanley and its skilled workforce."
Transcal also has operations in aviation, automotive and furniture with sites in Bristol, Singapore, Indonesia, Poland, and Belgium.
Robert Aitken, founder and managing director, said: "This is an important deal both for Transcal Rail and for our new colleagues at Winstanley. It puts us in a leading position to grow the enlarged group through a pipeline of rail franchise refurbishment across the UK etwork.
"In the past year we have worked closely with Winstanley on a number of projects, and we learned that both companies share a similar ethos on quality, design innovation and attention to detail. This gives us a sound basis for the business combination."
In rail Transcal has worked for the likes of First Great Western and East Midlands Trains in recent years.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.Â
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.Â
That is invaluable.Â
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article